This is not new. Many of the mailing lists that dominated the discourse of the early Internet in the 1990s operated under a similar rule. The novelty is that it disappeared almost entirely for decades.
The original purpose (on the Internet) was to create a space where complex ethical and moral questions could be explored and discussed in depth without risk of someone taking a hypothetical statement out of context to slander you, as people are wont to do. It would be orders of magnitude worse in this current age of people obsessed with generating click-bait for engagement, which wasn’t a thing back then. I personally found that environment to be intellectually stimulating and rigorous, I miss the standard of discourse of those days.
Chatham House Rule is going back to the old Internet, which valued novel insight and reasoned discourse highly, before the masses took over the Internet. The purpose was not to enable edgelords. Rational defense of ideas, statements, and hypotheses was expected and table stakes. Related rules of that era, such as Crocker’s Rule[0], placed responsibility on the reader to address uncomfortable or offensive feedback in the most dispassionate way possible.
Agreed - This article is wrong at the beginning, Chatham House Rules are not a gag, they allow everyone to talk FREELY. I have been to many classes and forums under this rule, not least at Chatham House in St James Square, and it means that the speakers can speak freely, name names, without hedging or fudging or perambulating around the shrubbery. You can report whatever you like, but not who said it. I have heard so many truths in these discussions that were 15 years before their time - the behaviour of Mohammed Al-Fayed, for example - which carry much more weight when you hear them from an eyewitness, even if they do not wish to be named.
I like how the parent points out that it was a similar rule and not explicitly stated as "Chatham House Rules".
>This is not new. Many of the mailing lists that dominated the discourse of the early Internet in the 1990s operated under a similar rule. The novelty is that it disappeared almost entirely for decades.
Anecdotally, I believe this rule was followed implicitly and often subconsciously and probably through some of the peak blogosphere era, despite blogs being accessible by the general public at the time. People were still looking for their tribe to escape the intellectual, creative, or censored dullness of their local surroundings.
The concept of ratting out people who were looking for the same thing would not occur to most people. They prized the discussion they couldn't have elsewhere more than the specific points being made. It'd be like the pilgrims going back to England and complaining to the English about all the other crazy heretics in the new world.
The whole thing started disapearing when going "viral" on social media started becoming a thing.
Yeah, I wasn't criticizing or anything, that's why I wrote it as clarification. I assumed other people like me might read your comment without having read the article.
Chatham House Rule goes back to 1927, a pre-transistor era.
It seems that already back then, during the early radio era, it was recognized that people dwell on "shocking sound bites" too much, at the cost of thinking things through.
Denunciations of the Chatham House Rule seem underdeveloped. According to the history on Wikipedia, it was invented to let members of post-WW1 English civic society discuss and debate potential reforms, and then get as much of that discussion into the public record as desired without having individual members pilloried for things they said during the discussion, even if the rest of the group disagreed with them.
This doesn’t even seem unique. Newspaper editorial boards don’t assign individual names to editorials or sentences thereof. Individual members of Congressional commissions aren’t cited for the sentences they (or their staff) committed to reports.
The easy solution to this in my state is to just wear a recording device.
I live in a one party consent state for the recording of conversations [1,2], whether on the phone or in person. I don't know how y'all get away without it in California. It pairs really well with free speech, and it feels wrong to not have this legal feature available.
If you don’t plan on following the rule, you don’t need a recording device.
Rules like this are an agreement among friends or attendants at an even. If you go in to such an event with an awareness of the rules but an intent to go against them, that’s bad faith. If you go in to such an event with an intent to secretly record people and release recordings of them that’s just terrible behavior, regardless of what the law says.
This was a response to Chatham House Rule becoming widespread at public-at-large community events.
Inviting the public and then putting them under a gag order isn't something we should be excited about. It feels like a slide into censorship.
If you want to publish ideas with anonymity, there are forums for that: social media, journalists with anonymous sources, anonymous editorial pieces, to name just a few. Some of these channels even let you lean on titles or authority, eg. "editorial by an anonymous tech CEO".
Chatham House Rule doesn't really work in practice, and it's a bizarre new social construct that stands in the way of fostering an open society.
We shouldn't be ashamed of free speech. Rather than bending over backwards to create artificial safe spaces where we can say controversial things, we should normalize speaking plainly and openly with one another. This is a weird retreat and it makes society more reclusive and less open. It handicaps us and makes us less authentic.
"Chatham House Rules" is not a problem that needs solving. I've only seen it used as a courtesy extended by peers to each other out of mutual respect.
"We will have conversations and share information and we agree we can act on the information but would all prefer not to be directly quoted or have the information we shared be shared with others outside the meeting."
It's not legal, it's social.
Break trust with a wiretap (really?) and you'll just find yourself no longer invited to the fun places.
> "We will have conversations and share information and we agree we can act on the information but would all prefer not to be directly quoted or have the information we shared be shared with others outside the meeting."
My understanding is that the Chatham House rule specifically permits sharing the information shared in the meeting as long as it is not attributed to any specific attendee.
IANAL but it would seem to me that one party consent just means you can record it. It does not automatically mean you can divulge.
And since you agreed to the chatham rules not to (i.e. you entered into a contract) you can still be liable for breach of contract in a civil court, with potential penalties and damages if those were part of the contract.
Of course anything you record can still be used in criminal or civil proceedings (e.g. if your interlocutor admits to a crime or utters illegal or tortuous speech, such as fraud, harassment, or verbal abuse).
The Chatham House Rule is not a legal principle. If you violate it by recording a meeting in a one-party consent state, the most likely consequence is that you wouldn’t be invited back. (Someone else posited legal consequences under contract law, but I’m not a lawyer.)
And for the record, California is not the only two-party consent state. There are twelve others.
It’s not a legal thing at all. It’s a social agreement that people opt into at an event.
Legally you can go to an event and act in bad faith without breaking the law. That’s not cool, but you’re not getting arrested for it.
If (or when) word gets out that you’re breaking the rules, or worse, secretly recording people against their wishes then you’d find yourself excluded from those groups and private events.
how is state law differing a glitch? privacy law is under developed federally considering the changes in scale distribution, storage, and capture tech. recording people without their awareness is a lie of omission that many would consider rude and manipulative.
are you sure that is a solution? one party consent sounds like a default if the parties have not negotiated something else. but i wonder if it still stands if you have agreed to a different set of rules that would bar recording or at least bar the release of such recordings. for example the default rule is i can share what i want with a conversation i have with someone but if prior to the conversation i sign an NDA then i may face a civil tort if i share information barred by the NDA.
Seems pretty obvious why in a world where if you misspeak or say something ill considered it can be all over twitter and have serious personal and professional ramifications.
Regardless of how well meaning people are in their desire to hold people to account for bad views, it does have a chilling effect, and you can't learn if you don't have a safe place to make mistakes.
The only times I've seen Chatham House rules used explicitly is when multiple companies have come together to discuss serious security concerns that affect all of them urgently (e.g. widespread 0-days, etc).
It makes sense that you want to have candid and open discussions, and those discussions will have to leak back to the respective companies for any concerted action to be taken, but you don't want your company's security specifics to be identifiable.
There are a number of different situations where I can see this being useful, but:
> “In corporate culture, there’s a liberating and freeing quality to the idea that this is a safe space for me to say unpopular things and not get labeled as a conservative or racist”
is really not one of them. I fully agree with Ocean's take that "maybe it’s just a bad solution to a worse problem," and I think there we can tease out two separate social problems:
1. People looking for safe spaces to say racist or other discriminatory things (generally identified as a politically-right problem)
2. The 0-strikes political climate we now (believe we) live in (generally identified as a politically-left problem)
I think these are actually the same problem: they are both about convincing yourself that "others" are "bad" and "we" are good, and looking for every conceivable way to do so. Not just in the specific instance, but permanently and unchangeably.
Somewhere along the way (my belief is that it was around the time social media took off, but I don't have proof for that), we forgot that we're more alike than we are different, and that people can grow and learn and change, and that both of those things are good, actually. It's not like there's some fictional past where we all agreed more than we do now, but it's how we relate to or exclude others that has changed.
> Somewhere along the way (my belief is that it was around the time social media took off, but I don't have proof for that), we forgot that we're more alike than we are different, and that people can grow and learn and change, and that both of those things are good, actually.
The difference between The Before Times and now is that it was historically hard to curate and communicate with a group of people who exclusively agreed with you. This had two primary consequences:
(1) You were constantly exposed to nice people who nonetheless disagreed with you about something / everything.
(2) It made you realize that you're the asshole, if you couldn't at least be polite to someone with different views than you.
Now, living in a bubble is trivial. It's also the subtle default on a lot of social platforms.
> Now, living in a bubble is trivial. It's also the subtle default on a lot of social platforms.
Indeed. IMO, social media should have very limited facilities for blocking/muting (e.g., maximum number of accounts to block, no blocking accounts that have never previously interacted with you, and no import functionality), so that it could only be used to stop true harassment, and not to intentionally live in such a bubble. That's one of my biggest criticisms of Bluesky: the whole design of their blocklist system seems to be to intentionally encourage this sort of thing.
This assumes that mass social media is some kind of idealized “meeting of the minds” rather than like…the digital equivalent of a loud and raucous bar.
The ability to block obnoxious and hateful people is fundamentally far, far less of causative factor of information bubbles than the pervasive engagement-driven algorithmic feeds are.
True harassment is VERY easy if you can create infinite amount of new accounts and each new account can harass the person and cant be blocked. True harassment is very easy if you are someone with many followers who will target whoever you choose to.
What you suggests is setup designed so that large scale harassment is easy. Alex Jones will love it, psychopaths will love it.
uhm, hard disagree. Harassment is the #1 problem blocking helps with but...
I block anything the platform suggests to me as a form of protest against it shoving click bait triggering channels in my face. I see this as resisting getting forced into a bubble by the platform.
I can't not use social media because it is the only way to get local info and it is a terrible way when you consider that for every post from someone i subscribe to, there are 6 ads and 6 channel suggestions specially chosen to entice me to join in a flame war of comments. I'd just give up if i didn't have the hope of at least from time to time catching a break because i blocked all the things the platform thought to suggest for a few weeks. My hope is to one day achieve a whitelist of local posts which is driven by geography, not agreement/alignment on politics or ideaology. since that's not an option, i'll blacklist the entire world if i must...
The context in this article is far more corporate and far less personal than what you describe. It's corporations and wealthy people within them hoping to not have their feet held to the fire for decisions that they know might not be appreciated by, or may actually negatively impact, the broader populace.
Alternatively, it’s a way for bad faith actors to spread their beliefs while not having to worry about their reputation. Many people with power are only hurt through public opinion, so this is the way they try to gain control over that.
This is not what I observed in the last 8 years. People with power (both D and R) get away with anything while individuals suffer for the slightest infractions.
Any given senate hearing or political speech would lead to dozens of expulsions in a standard censored software company.
Yup. The most obvious example is Donald Trump himself. Instead of suffering consequences for any of the things he's said, he has been elected to president of the United States. Twice! Meanwhile if you repeated what he says verbatim in your workplace you might find yourself gone by next week.
I think that reality check is that in many social groups and in many workplaces, guys who say and do "things like Donald Trump" are rewarded again and again and again.
To claim otherwise is just a lie designed to make it so it stays that way.
Isn’t there a danger that if the rule is selectively enforced, for whatever reasons, that it will actually decrease the credibility of the participants/organizers?
If you really believe something, say it loudly and proudly and sign your name to it. If you're not willing to have it attributed to you because it will make you look bad, then maybe you should take a moment to think about where those beliefs come from.
Well, there is a matter of safety, and not wanting to be harassed for your opinions. Some debates are so heated that an opinion stated either way is going to expose you to potential violence if not, just verbal abuse through various channels. I think even though you should be honest about your opinion, it’s obviously better to avoid that harm so why not be anonymous?
Personally, I’ve also found that stating your opinion, and having it recorded and known to everyone, makes it very hard for you to change your mind. We’re very harsh to people who do change their mind in such circumstances because the first thing we see is a record of them saying the opposite, and then we ask them to explain themselves and judge them like it’s some kind of fault in their character. There are opinions I had when I was 18 years old that I think abhorrent. I don’t want to be associated with them. I’m very happy there’s no record of me having these opinions. I don’t want to have to explain my past like that just to hold the opinions I have in the present. I have found that process never really ends — i’m regularly changing my opinions on beliefs overtime . I wonder what opinions I have now I will look back on with shame. so I try to make sure that I don’t have anything recorded for the end of times under my name just in case I want to distance myself.
Yea. The "What's going to be taboo in 30 years" question is a good one. I don't know and I don't have a good answer to that. I personally don't worry about it because it's never occurred to me to walk up close to the line of what's acceptable. I have pretty vanilla opinions.
But, for today, I always wonder when someone says they are going to be harassed for their opinions. Just what opinions are we talking about, here? That's what these discussions always seem to lack: Specific examples of what opinions you want to share that you are afraid to share.
I've always liked Stephen Fry's retort to the old "You can't say anything anymore!" line. If a friend tells you that, pull them aside in private and ask them "What exactly are these things you'd like to say but can't? We're in private now, and I'll give you a judgment-free chance to say what you think you're being prevented from saying. Go ahead!" Nine times out of ten, they still won't say it, because they know it's terrible. They just want to complain that they're somehow the victim of censorship.
The reason examples are generally those from the past it's because those from the present are, by definition, controversial and so it mostly would just derail the topic.
It just so happens that controversial views on one era frequently end up being seen as 'right and proper' in another, and vice versa.
Here's a 'safe one' unless you actually think about the implications of what it means I'm saying - forcing people, against their will, to kill (or be killed) is a fundamentally unacceptable violation of human dignity and human rights, that should never be tolerated under any circumstance.
That's probably safe to say, yet now apply it to certain situations and suddenly it becomes tabboo. Of course in the future it will probably be as plainly obviously correct as the notion that slavery is wrong.
> Yea. The "What's going to be taboo in 30 years" question is a good one. I don't know and I don't have a good answer to that. I personally don't worry about it because it's never occurred to me to walk up close to the line of what's acceptable. I have pretty vanilla opinions.
30 years is a long time. Even the most vanilla of opinions can become entirely taboo in less time than that. Take gay marriage as an example. In 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act became law. Joe Biden, Harry Reid, and Chuck Schumer were among the Congressmen who voted in favor of it, and Bill Clinton signed it. In 2008, Barack Obama said "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage." Even Obama's statement would be taboo today, let alone passing such a bill.
If you’re an Ivy League college professor, it is extremely risky to say that Palestine has a legitimate grievance against Israel. If you’re a small town high school coach, it would be smart to be careful about advocating for trans girls to be able to play on the girls team. You can be punished for opinions on various sides of the political spectrum.
If you're coaching a girls' team and you advocate that boys who say they are girls should be allowed to play on the team too, then that should be grounds for dismissal from the coaching role, as you'd be disadvantaging the girls on the team that you're supposed to be supporting.
This would be an entirely warranted "punishment for opinions" because of your failure to adequately safeguard young female athletes.
Appreciate the demonstration of why Chatham House Rule can protect opinions on the left side of the spectrum. Just to be clear, this is a real live example of someone saying that an individual should be punished for their opinions, separate from their actions.
> You should expect verbal pushback on your shitty ideas
There is also shitty pushback to decent, or inchoate, ideas. I strongly push back against the notion that there shouldn’t be spaces where one can say something dumb and not be crucified for it.
Again: “crucified.” Say what you actually want, I don’t know how to interpret this idea. I haven’t heard of a crucifixion in recent times if I’m being honest.
It’s less a real problem than you think. For example lots of politicians including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were on the record as not supporting gay marriage and later said that their position on the matter had evolved.
If you really believe something, say it loudly and proudly and sign your name to it.
And then wait for the lynch mob to come round because they disagree that {people shouldn't be property / women should be allowed to own property / etc }.
> If you really believe something, say it loudly and proudly and sign your name to it.
Anonymity should be lauded and protected, BUT if you're expecting to benefit from the use of your subject matter authority or credentials, then it needs to have your name attached.
Saying that repeatedly in most settings gets tedious for the audience who'd wonder whether you're alright.
Saying that any relevant technical setting as a newcomer would likely be received politely although many would then point out the ground truth behind that simplification:
Nature has many examples of physical gender not being straightforward; egg tempreture determining development in crocadiles and other reptiles for one.
Even in humans it's less that straightforward for a little over 1% of births and decidedly undecided even by experts with all the machines that beep for about a fiftieth of 1%.
Banging on about it in online forums using throwaway accounts is simply being a sad wannabe edge lord type.
> > "There are two genders." The belief comes from watching birds and bees.
> Nature has many examples of physical gender not being straightforward; egg tempreture determining development in crocadiles and other reptiles for one.
Temperature-dependent sex determination results in offspring of one sex or the other, so how does this refute the observation across species that there are two sexes? Please explain your reasoning.
I guess it contradicts the belief that sex is determined at conception? I don't know, I'm not familiar with crocodile biology.
For humans specifically we not only have xx and xy, but also xxx, xyy, xxxx, xxyy, xxxxx, xxxxy, 46xy dsd. There is a de la Chapelle syndrome, persistent Müllerian duct syndrome and more. These are just the most obvious things that muddy the waters, and I don't really know much about that topic, but confidently saying "there are two genders and you can tell by watching birds and bees" is anti intellectual
"I will put every person in precisely one out of two boxes at my discretion, and they will be happy about it".
Example: "I believe there are two kinds of people in the world, the righteous and the despicable. You belong with the despicable, I decided. If you disagree, you are woke".
The amount of inferences and insinuations you draw is a perfect example of why the Chatham House Rule is needed. I wonder how biologists discuss the issue if one hypothesis is outright forbidden. Note also that Ketanji Brown Jackson evaded the question when asked in a hearing.
Biologists would be the first one to correctly determine your sentence was not a biological hypotheses, but a political statement meant to declare your allegiance against trans rights and trans people.
They would consequently treat it exactly the way people in this thread do - with assumption that you have ideological and political goals against that group of people.
I used a made up but analogous example to see how the anti-trans rhetoric is intrinsically closed up to discussion.
It is a group of people deciding unilaterally what other people are without room for any alternatives. Say what you want against trans people, but at least they only identify themselves and ask to be allowed to exist.
Do you want to make an argument about bathrooms or sports whatever? Fine. But don't start it by de facto invalidating their existence, because that eliminates any room for a productive conversation.
They do it just fine. People who show up with crank hypotheses that are repeatedly rejected by evidence are not outright forbidden but generally not super popular.
I think it’s just a way to stop the reporting of an event turning the event into an opportunity for people to gain media coverage and propel their careers, or their interests that may not be related to the discussion at hand.
Public debates are swamped with characters who want to make a name for themselves by holding views, having a particular style, or catering to certain demographics. At this point, the debate ceases to ne a way of discussing ideas and opinions. It’s just a way to sell the participants. Likewise, there are many people who want the opposite. They hold opinions but really don’t want to be part of the wider social debate . They don’t want to be public figures defending a particular point. They just want to contribute in some way.
Having attended conferences under Chatham House Rule: It's invaluable if the event includes speakers that must maintain a specific public stance - politicians, people in highly visible roles/organizations, etc.
There's no top secret lore handed out, it's not a secret society taking over the world. It addresses the issue that any public statement will be cut up into sound bites, and the public discussion will only focus on one or two sentences, drowning out any nuance. And, if you misspoke, the public discussion will portray you as "not being aligned with your organizations values".
This allows people to set aside speechifying and talk about the actual problems. With lots of nuance. Acknowledging shared ground. Hashing out what the _actual_ disagreements are. We need more opportunities like that, not less.
And the rule only works if you're running the iterated version, and it's a high-value meeting. Because losing access to that forum is the penalty for violating the social compact.
Are Chatham House Rules just a way for people to hedge their bets? If they say something controversial, rude, offensive, or downright dodgy, they can hide behind anonymity. But if it’s a hit or something clever, insightful, or widely praised—they’re quick to claim credit. Convenient, isn’t it?
It is indeed convenient, not just for individuals, but for society at large. People keep their most "controversial, rude, offensive, or downright dodgy" only to be said amongst friends whom they trust to not "out" them, while keeping their utterances in the public sphere more self-censored, in order to avoid offending people and being rebuked. I'm pretty sure that this is how it's always been, and I'm quite happy with it.
It doesn't have to be controversial, even. It might just be a little bit private.
I'm on a social tech Slack that uses the CHR. It means if someone asks a question about, I don't know, how my company does something, I can say "ah, yeah, we used to use vendor X, that didn't work because of Y, and now we're with Z instead" without worrying about a blog post showing up that says "wlonkly from company Foo says that Foo used to use X but dropped them because..." but they can definitely use the information I gave them to help solve their problem.
> there’s a liberating and freeing quality to the idea that this is a safe space for me to say unpopular things and not get labeled as a conservative or racist,” Lederer said.
I think Lederer (who, by the way, is a she) isn't saying that she herself wants to say those things, she's describing one reason why something like the Chatham House rule might be popular. It's not perfectly clear from the article, which may be because Lederer wasn't clear or because the reporter didn't pass on all the details of what Lederer said and how she said it.
If I were to guess, the types of conversations that happen in these places that aren't gutter racism (they're eating the dogs etc) are going to be eugenics-adjacent, "enlightened" scientific racism instead. At least, that's what I've noticed among rationalists online.
> If I were to guess, the types of conversations that happen in these places that aren't gutter racism (they're eating the dogs etc) are going to be eugenics-adjacent, "enlightened" scientific racism instead. At least, that's what I've noticed among rationalists online.
This statement is proof for the need of this rule. Everyone who disagrees with the "one truth" is obviously a racist who is aligned with the worst of the other side. There can be no deviation or nuance. No debate, or benefit of doubt.
That is a deeply toxic view that in the past I only saw in the right. Maybe it was my own blindness. But now I see it all over the left as well.
Meh. I have seen these debates long enough to see that there is a lot of truth in that judgement. We are supposed to give infinite benefit of the doubt to people even after it is super clear what it is that they are saying. I have seen these paranoid SJW accusations to .... turn out truth enough times already.
Turns out, people who say these things are the ones who actually listen with comprehension to what is being said in those circles.
> Meh. I have seen these debates long enough to see that there is a lot of truth in that judgement.
There are fair cases of dog-whistle racism. But that is the person who is indeed racist and not necessarily everyone who falls to the whistle or happens to be next to that person. The problem is that this approach creates divisive politics.
Typically division would make sense if you're cutting off the terrible people. Unfortunately, current western politics is cutting off half of the population with a blunt instrument.
A lot of these snap judgements block our ability to self reflect. How can you tell if you're in a cult or an echo chamber?
How do you know your confirmation bias isn't lying to you?
> The problem is that this approach creates divisive politics.
No, this approach is making the existing division visible. The other approach is to politely ignore it and not talk about it, if you are anti racist be silent about what you see. Allow them to promote its politics and representants, do not object, do not point out to the obvious.
And that is pretty much how abortion protections got removed - "reasonable mainstream" was mocked for telling the truth and supposed to pretend republicans do not plan to destroy them until it was inevitable.
This is the only effective way to end racism and hate. The problem is that you pool too many people together as "racist" which eliminates the power of the word and sends them into a position of "I'll be hated by the left no matter what I do so I'll go full on".
This strategy has objectively not worked. More Latinos voted for Trump in this election even though his rhetoric got MUCH worse. He wants to deport 18M people and revoke citizenship. Yet, they still voted for him in much larger numbers. Women whose rights were denied voted for him. Why?
You can say they're all stupid and indeed there are quite a lot of those. But the fact is that saying to a person that he, all his friends, family and community are evil and racist doesn't bring that person to your side. It pushes them further down that bad path. It might be satisfying to confront a person in a "good vs. evil" scenario, but that doesn't fix the problem and makes everything worse.
Calling things what they are is talking about it. What you want is to enable one side and castigate the other for telling anything mildly bad about the one choose side. If many people are racists, yep that word will cover many people. There is nothing weird or wrong about it.
Latinos who voted for Trump did it because they are very conservative, have a thing against blacks/arabs and like Trumps personality. Effectively very similar reasons to why non latinos vote for Trump.
> Women whose rights were denied voted for him. Why?
Trump is a lot more popular among men then among women. That is the first thing. Second, yes there are women who deny some rights like abortion for women, that is not shocking new development or something.
> But the fact is that saying to a person that he, all his friends, family and community are evil and racist doesn't bring that person to your side. It pushes them further down that bad path.
Pretending racism is not racism and enabling racism and enabling it does not make these people less racist either. It makes you more like them and it makes middle more like them.
Indeed, what happens and happened is that their opinions are the ones primary being heard, those who oppose are mocked by those who want to be seen as enlightened. What happens is that their real goals are ignored untill they achieve them.
> Pretending racism is not racism and enabling racism and enabling it does not make these people less racist either
Again. Not what I said.
I think what you heard me say is appeasement. Which is VERY MUCH not what I said. I said you should avoid instant judgement which goes against the basic process of persuasion.
I said talking to people and not judging them immediately. Asking instead of confronting. If you start by calling someone a racist his shields go up and he won't listen to you. What did you accomplish by the attack?
Nothing. You didn't change his mind. You preached to the quire. People who hear you either agree with you and people who disagree with you think you're an ahole. Everyone digs deeper into what they already believe and become more entrenched/hostile.
If your goal is to keep people in their positions and prevent change then sure, that would work. You can virtue signal and position yourself as the "good guy".
My goal is to understand people and communicate with them. Even people who might be "bad" or uninterested in communicating/changing their mind. To do that I try to interact without being too judgemental. That's hard sometimes when I read some pretty horrible stuff from some people. E.g. I had a recent debate where a guy implied that me and all of my family should be dead or homeless (I'm an Israeli) so that's hard to reconcile and indeed we didn't reach a reasonable understanding because I feel he wasn't open to another point of view. He was just looking to prove his point (which is pretty insane if his point is I should die).
But it's still a conversation worth having. Understanding what drives a person to a racist position and asking the right questions can sometimes help them along the path of better understanding.
Around 2014 a friend of mine was running from Gazan missiles every night with his kids. His son started bedwetting again and his kids were very scared. They lived in the south very close to Gaza and it is indeed a dangerous area. Back then iron dome wasn't as good and the alarm times are very short. He exclaimed that as far as he cares the IDF should bomb the hell out of Gaza. Fck them for coming after his kids.
If you would have confronted him as a racist he would have become more enraged and probably would have moved to the right.
I asked him how a Palestinian father in Gaza would feel about that. He initially gave some kickback on that so I stressed the difference between Hamas and the civilian population which made him see that his statement was of rage that doesn't represent who he is.
I'm not saying you should tolerate racism. I'm saying you should understand people, listen to their motivations and logic. Talk to them individually and understand where they are coming from. Snap judgements are very problematic and overly simplistic.
I will add: Trump did not won by being nice and accommodating to leftists. Trump won by being accusatory and aggressive. Trump won by treating "suckers" badly.
Trump winning is the ultimate proof that what you suggest is a loosing strategy.
I brought up eugenics because I’ve seen this before and you stepped up to bravely defend it against accusations of wrongthink. I think you’re telling on yourself here.
> If I were to guess, the types of conversations that happen in these places that aren't gutter racism (they're eating the dogs etc) are going to be eugenics-adjacent, "enlightened" scientific racism instead. At least, that's what I've noticed among rationalists online.
I responded without talking about Eugenics at all... My problem was with this phrase of yours:
> "If I were to guess, the types of conversations that happen in these places"
That's a pretty problematic phrase. You're "guessing" what they're saying then judging them to be guilty based on your imagination.
Notice you're blaming me for that in this thread even though my response didn't mention that in any way. You chose to interpret that as me supporting Eugenics. That's projection. That isn't me.
That is a problematic way to look at life and at people in general.
Given that we now have tools that can fix some serious genetic errors, and enable even people who were dealt very bad cards in life, to live a healthy life - and given that this sector of biology is constantly evolving towards more capabilities, I would argue that it makes more sense to study genetic diseases and disorders than ever.
100 years ago, when genetics was unchangeable, the only solution to any genetic problem was heavy-handed: stop that individual from procreating. I agree that this is basically fascist (though even social democrats weren't immune to this).
But in 2050, we might be able to fix terrible things like Huntington's Chorea with a single shot. Which is fascinating, but it also needs some honesty. In the late 20th century, there was a lot of activism that tried to pass off seriously debilitating diseases as "being differentially abled" etc. While I can understand them wanting to stop eugenic thinking from seeping in, this attitude becomes counterproductive when tools are being developed to actually help the sick people. Similar to anti-vaxxerism, in fact.
People like Charles Murray think people like me are subhuman for having low IQ and being non-white, the conversations I'm hearing aren't about curing disabilities they're about the "wrong type" of people procreating.
Weird that you got "curing disabilities" from my comment on "scientific racism" though. That reaction kinda concerns me.
Not everywhere is America (in fact, 96% of humanity is outside the US) and local conditions, sensibilities and conflict topics vary.
Here I live in a nation that was considered non-Aryan by the Nazis and destined to become a nation of illiterate slaves for their Master Race. During their 6 years of rule here, their plans were only mitigated by their need to win the war first, for which they needed the local industry to be operable - hard to square such necessity with repressions against the workers themselves. But they did succeed in murdering parts of our intelligentsia.
So yeah, race-based repression is evil, I am with you on this.
But I am also close to a doctor who prescribes hearing aids for children and the main context in which I hear the word "eugenics" is her problems with the deafness advocates, who want to prevent deaf kids from hearing. And they play the "eugenics" card incessantly.
I am sick of them, they are at best severely misguided, at worst evil people. And if enough people say that "helping kids hear is eugenics", they will drown out the racialists in public discourse, at least locally.
There are plenty of things you can say that are career limiting moves if attributed to an individual at a particular company. Eg. if an OpenAI employee says that ChatGPT is negatively impacting the education of children, it gets recorded, and then used in a hit piece against the company, that could go poorly. Or a Facebook employee speaking frankly about the negative impacts of social media, as another example.
With Chatham House Rules you don't have to worry about a gotcha quote getting pulled out of context or used as a statement against interest.
Negatively impacting is a bit of an understatement. It has completely and utterly ruined education of the middle, finishing what COVID started. The real question is when, not if, someone at OpenAI goes on the record to stop the madness.
I'm guessing this definition of a safe space (e.g. able to say what you want, with possible racism included) isn't what nonconservatives would label a safe space.
I was at a party recently where someone argued hard-shell tacos are racist.
More seriously, one could probably express a broader range of views--correct or not--on Israel and Palestine five years ago than one might be comfortable expressing (or even asking about) now.
> I don't think this is a serious argument and it's weird that you're taking it seriously
They were yelling and called the host a xenophobe. They will not be invited back. It’s not a serious argument. But they took it seriously.
> someone that has been yelled at by all sides of this debate I really don't think that's true, I was getting yelled at 5 years ago too
You can always get yelled at. The point is almost any expression about this topic is likely, today, to set someone in a large group off. That wasn’t true five years ago.
In 2020, it was acceptable to say that the FDA was rushing through the COVID vaccine's authorization process and not doing a good job of making sure it was safe.
There are people everywhere publicly saying vaccines are great and other saying they are terrible. Andrew Wakefield, then Jenny McCarthy, really kicked things into high gear with their claims, and that was 20+ years ago.
Then, as now, reasonable people recognize that while no vaccine is perfect (hell, even a natural exposure to many diseases doesn't always confer immunity) on the net they are improving health way more than it is causing loss of health. Then, as now, people who claim unsupported things (MMR causes autism) are going to get push-back.
The only thing that has changed, that I can see, is that the denialism is stronger now than it was five years ago.
This was laughed out of the room 5 years ago too, the only difference is now the HHS secretary designate is also an anti-vaxxer in addition to the incoming president rather than just the President.
A lot of people on Facebook use their real names, and back before I quit it, I was pretty shocked at the kinds of horrible things people would say under their real name and under a picture of their face, also, knowing full well their friends and family could easily see it. I don't think real names would help that much.
That strikes me as boomer stuff though. Not as many millennial++ doing that, and I figure that number will just decline (especially given that you can easily just go be socially repulsive with anonymity and no repercussions on other mainstream networks now).
LinkedIn is a professional network. It's not designed to facilitate the same types of conversations that happen e.g. on Twitter (and no, I don't think the presence of anon accounts make Twitter what it is, at least not in the circles I care about).
"Real world" is umm... okay. Thanks for the contribution.
> this is a safe space for me to say unpopular things and not get labeled as a conservative
The first one is confusing. The US is a very conservative country. It just elected a very conservative president. Statistically like 40% of voters call themselves conservative.
If you look at voting maps for the 2024 USA Presidential Election, you can see that there is a blue band of Democratic voters right down the coast, including the Bay Area. The Bay Area in particular appears to have a very different culture to most of the USA, although I have never been there so cannot confirm that statement personally. I don't think that many Democratic party members consider themselves conservative, whereas a large proportion of Republican party members do.
Voting patterns in the US follow population density. The higher the density, the more Democratic voters there tend to be. It’s only if you look at geography that the US appears conservative; unfortunately, due to the Electoral College, “land” can effectively vote.
Mainstream Democrats are conservative, mainstream Republicans are regressive. There is no actual liberal-centric major political party in the US, let alone one that's genuinely leftist.
What do you consider liberal-centric policies? Or leftist?
As far as I'm aware, Democrats are still rather strong proponents of liberalism. Even most Republicans are proponents, though generally more for classical liberalism than modern liberalism.
Liberalism, arguably, isn't really on the left-right axis at all.
Modern human life is built upon millenia of mistakes, not to mention natural selection, which is eons of mistakes. A huge differentiator for humans is vastly more powerful communication which let's us share and influence instead of having everyone make the same mistakes. Despite the vitriol that has plagued online forums and social media for decades, I find the opportunity to see others make mistakes hugely valuable to me. That includes saying stupid or wrong things.
I‘ve recently joined a group of professionals in a compliance role that operates under Chatham House Rules.
The idea is that you can sound off ideas and your understanding of legal issues without people from other companies turning around and blabbing about publically how you are wrong.
Presumably I don't understand current norms, but this is some pretty bizarre stuff. So people have rediscovered the basic rules of civility and it's taking the world by storm? There needs to be an explicit statement that when you're somewhere you've been invited that you shouldn't publicize what the other guests have said in order to do them harm?
Do the people who think this it is sensible to live like this even have a name for the toxic brew in which they're swimming?
There was a period when I was having fairly regular luncheon meetings in New York and the purpose was really so that people could talk openly about various tech issues and not have their name appear in a blog post (which I probably wouldn't have done anyway). It wasn't so people could spill dirt or say things that could get them in trouble with HR if they appeared in pront.
Maybe overused today but there are some times when you hold back on things if you know they may appear in print. Certainly, over the years, I've been quite careful about what I say to journalists--even those I generally trust.
Are the NDAs signed between attendees and the host? That puts the host in the awkward position of having to enforce the NDAs, even if the injured party is one of the guests.
> Legally enforcing every social norm is dystopian.
But I didn't say that? I was genuinely unsure of whether this was something that could be taken to court if someone violated it. If it's socially bound, and the purpose is to increase free speech, I find that less compelling in today's culture.
Anything can be taken to court. I expect, in general, people get mad at the person who broke the rule, they don't get invited back to future iterations, and they suffer reputational damage. When I've been in that sort of situation, the rule is made clear and no one breaks it--at least publicly.
> Legally enforcing every social norm is dystopian
Persecuting people for their beliefs by exploiting loopholes (e.g. blast on social media, bully their employer, etc) is also pretty dystopian, don't you think?
And it's not like the persecutors ever give you the full story. For example, the reporting on Meta ending DEI didn't want you to know their rather logical view of the situation (discrimination on the basis of immutable characteristics is wrong). What fraction of people actually believe in giving a boost to certain candidates purely on the basis of race? Certainly not enough for the persecutors to allow that argument to be broadcast widely.
> Persecuting people for their beliefs by exploiting loopholes (e.g. blast on social media, bully their employer, etc) is also pretty dystopian, don't you think?
Sometimes it can be. More than one thing can be dystopian.
If the rule is given as a condition of attendance, then it could reasonably be considered a contractual obligation. The event organizer could then sue for damages on the basis of breach of contact. The extent of those damages would be related to how much reputational damage the venue or event organizer suffered, and the potential loss of future attendance caused by that.
In addition, both the subject of a secret conversation and the participants of that conversation could sue someone for disclosing the discussion on the basis of libel. My understanding of USA law is that libel has a very high threshold and is therefore rarely litigated, but in other jurisdictions, such as the UK, libel can be as simple as saying something true with the intent to hurt the subject's reputation.
Many people try to put as much as possible into bespoke, written contracts, but usually a mixture of common law and implicit contracts is adequate to litigate almost anything considered harmful by society. I doubt the NDA is actually needed as long as the Chatham House rule is made clear.
> [At] an intimate dinner party in Los Altos Hills, Brex Supper Club salons, [...] the rules of the house are increasingly Chatham.
What a strange comment.
If after attending a dinner party people are repeating everything they heard, in public, with attribution - then that dinner party absolutely was not intimate.
> If after attending a dinner party people are repeating everything they heard, in public, with attribution - then that dinner party absolutely was not intimate
It's still helpful if you're bringing together groups of people who don't know (and thus may surprise) each other to lay the ground rules. I'd be quite upset if I held a birthday party, which may go to 30 or 40 people, and learned that something (possibly quite inappropriate) that had been said was being tweeted or whatever.
> if these groups of people don't know one another - that's basically the definition of not intimate
Different definitions of intimate [1]. Webster's gives an intimate club as an example. I'd also suggest an intimate dinner over which e.g. in-laws meet.
I agree with you. I've never lived in SV, and after interacting with a lot of folks in the bay, I'd prefer to never live there. It's seems like a weird Twilight Zone place where everyone is a business contact and nobody is just a friend. Even the concept of "intimacy" can be tacitly warped around that social framework.
It means don't front, slander, or gossip about the people who welcomed you, and especially on social media. not sure why it's hard to act like they're going to be invited back. just try not to be the one who has to be told.
I wonder what the people against anonymity would make of the Federalist Papers, if they even remember them. Many of the "founding fathers" of the United States wrote under pseudonyms or other such distractions. Probably a dismissal of the "that was then, this is now" variety, which they only haul out as a defense they do not hold in any great breadth, as those same folks will gladly go on about generational trauma, reparations, and so on. Convenient only.
As social animals, we think, learn and grow by interacting with others. It's absolutely ok to say stupid things you aren't sure about, and I think it's generally better that people do so in smaller personal settings rather than broadcasting to the internet at large.
I agree completely. I meant - and I should have been clear - people saying stupid things to be loud and disruptive, not because they don't know and are trying to explore something. The latter is great and should be encouraged.
This isn't about people speaking candidly. It's about not hurting the feelings of people who do and work on bad things and allowing them to still get invited to events without fearing any consequences for their actions.
It's the same reason Kissinger still got invites to Manhattan social events (and, bizarrely, Clinton campaign events) long after it was known that he was a traitor and a war criminal.
Generally, lack of consequence results in people behaving less responsibly, but ...
> baseless grandstanding is incentivised by an audience
... the dynamic you cite has been far more influential in humanity's new social medium, social media.
Arguably, though, that is due to a lack of consequence for their actions. Zuckerberg says these things and there are no serious conequences (possibly; we'll see). When there are conequences, it does stop people - look at the effectiveness of the anti-DEI and anti-LGBTQ mobs in silencing people and organizations.
It can be so very valuable. I was at a conference in the last quarter discussing the effects of the Houthis on shipping in the Red Sea. There has long been rumour that it's possible to pay a few hundred thousand dollars, funneled to the Houthis, for which your ship will be granted safe passage through the Red Sea without being shot at with anti-ship missiles, or attacked by drones. There was rumour that some of the insurers in the Lloyds shipping insurance markets were open to these negotiations. Not long ago the UN pushed out a report discussing this sort of payment.
A bod there whose situation in life made him one of the most likely people in the world to know if anyone in the Lloyds markets was engaging (except anyone actually doing it), and has a long reputation of saying truthful things under the Chatham House rules in such conferences, said he'd not seen any of that and not heard of anyone doing it. It's not the same as fact, but with his long-term reputation and his position in life, it signficantly changed my working calculus on the subject. He didn't want to be professionally quoted on it, hence the CH rule.
Nothing at all to do with having the freedom to be a dickhead or anything like that. Nothing to do with wanting to lie to people without consequence.
More like stupid is suddenly everywhere in the Bay Area.
The one fine piece of good journalism in there is that SFSU professor: humans have a hard time separating the ideas from the speaker. Done.
Now, I might be wrong, but it sure does sound like tech folks in the Bay are getting ready to take advantage of MAGA madness, and paranoid about AI / surveillance.
If anything, it’s this orange website that’s closer to untangling identity from the content, but that’s nothing new and Web 1.0 news.
> but it sure does sound like tech folks in the Bay are getting ready to take advantage of MAGA madness, and paranoid about AI / surveillance.
Congress is the one that regulates most of commerce and they are always slow and inept. I don’t expect much meaningful stuff to change. If anything it will be some sort of AI regulation that will benefit the top companies under the guise of ‘safety’ and probably get bipartisan support.
Zuckerberg also said he was planning his moves for a long time and waited until the elections were over so it didn’t seem like he was trying to influence it and any time he announced it he’d have been be accused of doing it under political pressure. That’s also how fact checking started in the first place, with extreme pressure during COVID and federal gov employees calling meta employees, yelling at them when they declined to delete things. So technically it’s a reversion of a system created under political pressure.
I've seen the existence of chatham house rules events abused pretty heavily by bullshitters as an excuse for asserting things but then refusing to substantiate them.
It's nothing impressive. It's secrecy and corruption; it's the modern trend of power grabs and exclusivity (withholding information) over efficiency, productivity, intelligence, and all the benefits of an open, free society. It just has a fancy British name to give it legitimacy.
You want liquidity and lots of exposure in any marketplace, including the one of ideas. Ideas without sunshine tend to rot and fester. That might be why there are so many obviously stupid ones these days.
Interesting point. While I agree that the outcome has been bad or really catastrophic, I'm not sure it's the same cause.
Certainly ideas from positions of power need openeness and sunshine, speaking very generally. The problem on social media is the flood of crap that buries everything else, and nobody can keep up - the sunshine effect is overwhelmed.
Are you saying it's better for powerful people to make plans and develop ideas in secret? What about government?
At least to some significant degree, the grandstanding has nothing to do with the actual ideas and plans; it's part of the coverup; it's a distraction while the real plans are made. Grandstanders like Trump and Musk often say things they have no intention of following through on.
To the grandstanders, who are really propagandists, words are weapons and not information. And of course, everyone's words are some of each, but the grandstanders are far over toward one endpoint or axis on that graph.
Which opinions are not wrong? Is it every one I don't hold or is there a database of rightthink I can reference? How can we have discussions and change minds if we can't communicate what we really think?
Regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the grandparent's views, i think this comment demonstrates why the gp might feel cautious about giving their honest views on the subject.
How about South Africa not doing so well currently? It could be viewed through a racial lens but it means you can’t objectively discuss and hopefully help the situation. IMO this is exactly an example of where such closed rules may legitimately help. In the process of brainstorming you are bound to say something stupid or illegal but that’s the whole idea of brainstorming- to throw ideas and see what sticks
> In the process of brainstorming you are bound to say something stupid or illegal but that’s the whole idea of brainstorming- to throw ideas and see what sticks
That's a great point. One thing I've not enjoyed in modern corporate culture is the mental gymnastics required to usher out a statement that couldn't be interpreted as offensive to anyone on the planet. It's not like I'm _trying_ to be offensive, but as the number of rules governing speech increases, it becomes difficult to have conversations that are not laden with newspeak.
Removing that cognitive load is bound to leave more brainpower for the task at hand.
Unless it is group of South African expats why should we brainstorming?
Is South Africa asking for help ? Either for ideas or for money? Or is there genocide or other basic human rights abuses that we cannot but intervene.
The presumption that we can solve or think about their problems better than them is where it is offensive not what is being said, people are more than capable of finding their own solutions to their own problems.
I didn’t say you can’t be helpful, but if not being asked that is the definition of presumption .
> Why is this an inappropriate topic to discuss?
It would be same as my neighbor discussing how to fix my problems with my wife or Mexicans having leadership conferences on how to prevent the raise of Trump . Same as how it feels for citizens when Elon Musk is doing now in UK, Germany or France
Domestic intervention or influence by foreign actors no matter if well intentioned or not is inappropriate
> if not being asked that is the definition of presumption
If I want to have a discussion about South Africa, that's between me and whomever I'm speaking to. South Africa doesn't have a global veto on conversations about itself.
> would be same as my neighbor discussing how to fix my problems with my wife
If they're having a conversation in their house about your relationship, I don't see the issue. It's rude. But it may also be interesting or even instructive to their own situations.
In a public conversation preferences of the subject i.e. who being talked about when discussing about them publicly matters more than the participants i.e who is doing the talking
Period , done . if you disagree then you and I fundamentally different views on what is a civilized society and I hope my neighbors have my world view than yours.
> Unless it is group of South African expats why should we brainstorming?
Why not? British people discussed the US election and Trump, lots of Americans express opinions on Britain, everyone expresses opinions about Russia and Ukraine, etc.
I would say that people's opinions about countries they do not know first hand are often (if not usually) worthless, but I cannot imagine that in any of the above cases (or similar) many people would say they have no reason not to have opinions.
500 years of slavery, colonialism, genocide and religion, propping up banana republics and dictators and countless other crimes in name of civilizing society or recently bringing freedom, fighting communism or spreading democracy is why not.
Recent and ancient history shows time and again that the opinions become policy, governing everything from who and how aid is given to bombing anyone you don’t like . Policies change and principles abandoned with changing domestic political winds .
>How about South Africa not doing so well currently?
I recently read a book review that discussed South Africa today. One of the many points it made about the dire state of things is that the air force planes that flew overhead during Mandela's inauguration were, a decade later, completely inoperable. <https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-south-africas-brave-new-...>.
Why is that shocking? It would be the case no matter how they do as a country
As a long it was a white government there was lot of monetary support and knowledge transfer to South Africa, all the way to building nuclear weapons those collaborations stopped once the racial profile changed.
overtime that means complex technologies like military aircraft which are difficult to keep flying anytime will stop working as South Africa was and is not equipped or can afford to maintain them on their own.
no nation which flies f-35s can keep them flying if they are not in trump’s good graces now.
This is why countries like china or India or few others who can afford to, invest heavily to build their domestic defense infrastructure.
You're making the point for why people who are not South African can have interesting and meaningful conversations about South Africa. All while possibly expressing views that are incorrect but still interesting to consider and respond to.
The irony is not lost to me, my comments without lived experience are one reason why we shouldn’t do it
My objection is bigger than that though, it is independent of the merit or quality of the discourse , unwelcome discourse is impolite even if it is sound.
> my comments without lived experience are one reason why we shouldn’t do it
This is a fair rule for you to live your life by. I think it crosses a line when someone insists it be one everyone follow.
I personally got value from the comment about South Africa, and that’s despite knowing South Africans. (Their “lived experience” as non-military non-historian non-aviation South Africans is sort of irrelevant to questions of military aviation history.)
Nobody is expecting anyone to follow someone else principles.
You and OP should follow the principles that you feel best.
It wasn’t a mere discussion on military aviation history, context matters, the implication here is post apartheid the government is corrupt and incompetent, it was corrupt before too just propped up better by foreign powers.
> the implication here is post apartheid the government is corrupt and incompetent, it was corrupt before too just propped up better by foreign powers
A discussion about which one can knowledgeably have without any South African “lived experience,” apart from that of people then in that government.
Like, a group of diplomats in Jburg could probably have a more-informed discussion of American politics and history than a random assortment of Americans.
Forming opinions should not need anything yes, however promoting or publishing that others will consume should be based on stronger foundations don’t you think ?
I don't disagree with the spirit of your argument and lived experience should not trump all, it should have only some weight and other points should qualify their statements clearly.
We live in the age of disinformation, influencers, and anti-intellectualism that actively dismissive qualified sources, we have to put value in source quality, while not completely dismissing the ones without them.
> Why is that shocking? It would be the case no matter how they do as a country
From the review that I cited and you didn't bother to read:
>A little over a decade later and that same South African Air Force was no longer able to fly. It wasn’t for lack of planes: new ones were procured from European arms manufacturers in an astonishingly expensive and legendarily corrupt deal. But once purchased the planes rotted from lack of maintenance and languished in hangers for lack of anybody able to fly them. Most of the qualified pilots and technicians had been purged, and most of the remainder had resigned. The air force did technically still have pilots, after all it would be a bit embarrassing not to, but those pilots were chosen for patronage reasons and didn’t technically have any idea how to fly a fighter jet.
Surely this is a question where no answer can be simultaneously true and well-considered? (EDIT: and specific).
If they think bees are secretly plotting to overthrow the Welsh government, but are afraid to say so, they're not going to willingly reveal that they have anti-apiary tendencies in response to a direct question.
I was about to provide a fairly large list, but maybe something general is better:
You know that there is a "wrong opinion" that'll get you in trouble when you and conservatives begin to nod in agreement with George Carlin, even though you've always thought of yourself as liberal.
You might even be an immigrant and a person of color who prefers to date the same sex, and yet, you're going to keep your mouth shut because anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion.
Are all the contrarian lemmings having self-imposed nightmares of being cancelled for eagerly sucking on the DoD teat by backing/creating AI killer drone tech because they can no longer create alpha? Say it ain't so! Or maybe it's just another hyped trend, like reading Sapiens or calling oneself a "pattern matcher".
Odds are they're not talking about saving the world in these spaces.
I have no idea whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but this is not freedom of speech, for the obvious reason that its based entirely on the limitation of speech, in this case, the freedom to truthfully state who said something.
I’m not a free speech absolutist, so that’s not a negative for me, but it’s extremely annoying to see a lot of people pretend to be pro free speech by policing what others might say about them.
\0 in the context of a specific meeting or gathering ..
\1 the freedom to speak one's mind and say whatever it is you wish to say,
\2 the constraint that no third party shall repeat your words without your permission, quote you out of context, report what you said and the company in which you said it, etc.
There's no legal binding or specific prosecution in the original context, simply a literal "Gentleman's Agreement" and the general social implication that should you make and then violate such an agreement then you will likely be excluded from similar events and such company in future.
It arose from diplomatic ranks and is a polite form of the parallel convention Snitches get Stitches.
In the UK Foreign Affairs sphere the rule is often exercised to advance a piece of policy via rumour and backtalk, nobody officially directly states that (for example) the military may be bought into play in some region, none the less word gets out that such a thing is being considered by those that can make it happen, subsequently someone folds their position and trade resumes (maybe).
"Free speech" is normally about a government restriction on speech. Most people don't take it to mean temporary restrictions during specific private events.
For example, at a funeral, the norm is not to speak ill of the dead (or any other time, for that matter), and if you break that rule, you might find yourself socially excluded. But that has nothing to do with the concept of "free speech".
The same goes for some kind of proceeding where you are not permitted to speak, or some situation where you are given information in confidence, or your signing of an NDA.
> E.g. if someone beats you up due to a view you expressed, i consider that a free speech issue.
If the police beat you up, then that's a freedom of speech issue (as well as police abuse, etc), since one might argue that the government is suppressing your speech.
If a private citizen beats you up, then I disagree; it's merely a matter of assault. That's illegal anyway and your speech had little to do with it. If someone beats me up for looking at them the wrong way, I'd hardly argue that it's a "looking the wrong way" issue.
I appreciate that you consider otherwise, and of course it's subjective so your view is as valid as mine. I'm just identifying that I think your concept is "creep" that has occurred over time for some subset of people, spawned by a principle that never originally included what you now include in the concept.
If you come to my house and express a view I disagree with, and I ask you to stop talking, I'm abridging your freedom of speech. (I'm not violating your First Amendment rights.)
> I think your concept is "creep" that has occurred over time for some subset of people, spawned by a principle that never originally included what you now include in the concept
You've got it backwards. The Athenians believed in both "isēgoriā, or equality of public speech, which was associated with formal political institutions and democratic deliberation; and parrhēsiā, the license to say anything, even (or especially) if it went against the current" [1].
The First Amendment is based on the freedom of speech in the English Parliament [2]. Millenia older. It isn't until the Warren Court, after WWII, that the modern interpretation that the First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring speech comes into focus [3].
> If you come to my house and express a view I disagree with, and I ask you to stop talking, I'm abridging your freedom of speech.
To what extent are you able to abridge someone's freedom, though? The only legally permitted thing you can do is to compel that person to leave. If you are hosting that person commercially, say by running a lodging house, even that option may be restricted by other laws.
Legal restrictions on speech are a little different, because of the unlimited sovereign power of the law (what Max Weber called the state's monopoly on violence). The USA has a special limitation on its own sovereignty by means of a written constitution, but I do believe that only applies to government restrictions as parent said.
Also, it is worth noting that the freedom of speech in Britain that you link to applies only to Members of Parliament. Nobody else is afforded freedom of speech by the Bill of Rights; other people have to look to different laws to defend themselves.
> To what extent are you able to abridge someone's freedom, though
I could ask them to leave, I could threaten to not invite them back, I could withhold something they want or might want in the future. Social sanctions are vast.
> it is worth noting that the freedom of speech in Britain that you link to applies only to Members of Parliament
Yes. That is the first time a First Amendment-style protection was passed into law. The modern view of freedom of speech being constrained to what the state can and cannot do starts from around then.
> I'm just identifying that I think your concept is "creep" that has occurred over time for some subset of people, spawned by a principle that never originally included what you now include in the concept.
Fair, but I think the creep is in the other direction. I think that this notion that only the government counts is extremely new (and somewhat limited to the cultural context of the USA) and the broader version is the traditional definition of what freedom of speech means.
In your example, speech has everything to do with it. It is the motivation for the crime of assault, correct? And its intention is to suppress speech by deterring others through violence.
Free speech only means you are not prevented from expressing yourself. It does not mean freedom from consequences.
While I don’t condone violence that is not the only possible consequence. If you call me an asshole that is your right, but if I disinvite you from the party I was planning as a result that is not a ‘free speech issue’.
> Free speech only means you are not prevented from expressing yourself. It does not mean freedom from consequences.
People say this a lot but i doubt anyone actually literally believes this.
If the state executes you as a consequence of your speech, it is an unambigious free speech violation no matter how you interpret that term.
What people really mean is its not a blanket protection against every consequence, but they hide that part because then you have to explain which consequences are reasonable and which are not which is complicated and requires nuance.
> Free speech only means you are not prevented from expressing yourself. It does not mean freedom from consequences.
Honestly, I find this to be very manipulative rhetoric. Effectively, it makes the notion of free speech mean absolutely nothing. The problem here is that people want to pretend they are for absolute free speech, because saying something else is socially punished. But they are not in reality, sometimes for good reasons, so they resort to this sort of sophistry.
You can say what you want in North Korea, freely. It is just that you wont have freedom from consequence int he form of torture and death.
I don’t think it is just about government restriction. Free speech and censorship are general principles that apply to everything. But personally, I don’t think asking for confidentiality at a private event is a violation of free speech principles. On the other hand, large privately owned tech platforms that practice censorship disguised as moderation, should be criticized because they are effectively the new public square.
Being able to chose who you associate with and who you do not associate is usually part and parcel with free speech.
I'd agree with you about the NDA bit. Using courts to enforce seems anti-free speech
However the milder version of it, where if someone violates the rule they aren't invited back, hardly seems like a free speech issue. Free speech doesn't mean you have to stay friends with someone who told your secrets to a third party. Free speech means you can say whatever you want, but it also means you can not talk to whomever you want.
This is not new. Many of the mailing lists that dominated the discourse of the early Internet in the 1990s operated under a similar rule. The novelty is that it disappeared almost entirely for decades.
The original purpose (on the Internet) was to create a space where complex ethical and moral questions could be explored and discussed in depth without risk of someone taking a hypothetical statement out of context to slander you, as people are wont to do. It would be orders of magnitude worse in this current age of people obsessed with generating click-bait for engagement, which wasn’t a thing back then. I personally found that environment to be intellectually stimulating and rigorous, I miss the standard of discourse of those days.
Chatham House Rule is going back to the old Internet, which valued novel insight and reasoned discourse highly, before the masses took over the Internet. The purpose was not to enable edgelords. Rational defense of ideas, statements, and hypotheses was expected and table stakes. Related rules of that era, such as Crocker’s Rule[0], placed responsibility on the reader to address uncomfortable or offensive feedback in the most dispassionate way possible.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12881288
Agreed - This article is wrong at the beginning, Chatham House Rules are not a gag, they allow everyone to talk FREELY. I have been to many classes and forums under this rule, not least at Chatham House in St James Square, and it means that the speakers can speak freely, name names, without hedging or fudging or perambulating around the shrubbery. You can report whatever you like, but not who said it. I have heard so many truths in these discussions that were 15 years before their time - the behaviour of Mohammed Al-Fayed, for example - which carry much more weight when you hear them from an eyewitness, even if they do not wish to be named.
I like how the parent points out that it was a similar rule and not explicitly stated as "Chatham House Rules".
>This is not new. Many of the mailing lists that dominated the discourse of the early Internet in the 1990s operated under a similar rule. The novelty is that it disappeared almost entirely for decades.
Anecdotally, I believe this rule was followed implicitly and often subconsciously and probably through some of the peak blogosphere era, despite blogs being accessible by the general public at the time. People were still looking for their tribe to escape the intellectual, creative, or censored dullness of their local surroundings.
The concept of ratting out people who were looking for the same thing would not occur to most people. They prized the discussion they couldn't have elsewhere more than the specific points being made. It'd be like the pilgrims going back to England and complaining to the English about all the other crazy heretics in the new world.
The whole thing started disapearing when going "viral" on social media started becoming a thing.
> Agreed - This article is wrong at the beginning, Chatham House Rules are not a gag
FYI gag as in "gag order" not gag as in a joke.
In case anyone else was confused about this as I was :)
I didn't mean gag as joke, it was a direct reference to the article, but I see that people might be confused.
Yeah, I wasn't criticizing or anything, that's why I wrote it as clarification. I assumed other people like me might read your comment without having read the article.
Chatham House Rule goes back to 1927, a pre-transistor era.
It seems that already back then, during the early radio era, it was recognized that people dwell on "shocking sound bites" too much, at the cost of thinking things through.
> Many of the mailing lists that dominated the discourse of the early Internet in the 1990s operated under a similar rule.
What lists are you referring to? I don't remember this ever coming up.
Denunciations of the Chatham House Rule seem underdeveloped. According to the history on Wikipedia, it was invented to let members of post-WW1 English civic society discuss and debate potential reforms, and then get as much of that discussion into the public record as desired without having individual members pilloried for things they said during the discussion, even if the rest of the group disagreed with them.
This doesn’t even seem unique. Newspaper editorial boards don’t assign individual names to editorials or sentences thereof. Individual members of Congressional commissions aren’t cited for the sentences they (or their staff) committed to reports.
Chatham House Rule, meet Chesterton’s Fence.
The easy solution to this in my state is to just wear a recording device.
I live in a one party consent state for the recording of conversations [1,2], whether on the phone or in person. I don't know how y'all get away without it in California. It pairs really well with free speech, and it feels wrong to not have this legal feature available.
[1] https://www.justia.com/50-state-surveys/recording-phone-call...
[2] https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/georgia-recording-law
If you don’t plan on following the rule, you don’t need a recording device.
Rules like this are an agreement among friends or attendants at an even. If you go in to such an event with an awareness of the rules but an intent to go against them, that’s bad faith. If you go in to such an event with an intent to secretly record people and release recordings of them that’s just terrible behavior, regardless of what the law says.
This was a response to Chatham House Rule becoming widespread at public-at-large community events.
Inviting the public and then putting them under a gag order isn't something we should be excited about. It feels like a slide into censorship.
If you want to publish ideas with anonymity, there are forums for that: social media, journalists with anonymous sources, anonymous editorial pieces, to name just a few. Some of these channels even let you lean on titles or authority, eg. "editorial by an anonymous tech CEO".
Chatham House Rule doesn't really work in practice, and it's a bizarre new social construct that stands in the way of fostering an open society.
We shouldn't be ashamed of free speech. Rather than bending over backwards to create artificial safe spaces where we can say controversial things, we should normalize speaking plainly and openly with one another. This is a weird retreat and it makes society more reclusive and less open. It handicaps us and makes us less authentic.
"Chatham House Rules" is not a problem that needs solving. I've only seen it used as a courtesy extended by peers to each other out of mutual respect.
"We will have conversations and share information and we agree we can act on the information but would all prefer not to be directly quoted or have the information we shared be shared with others outside the meeting."
It's not legal, it's social.
Break trust with a wiretap (really?) and you'll just find yourself no longer invited to the fun places.
> "We will have conversations and share information and we agree we can act on the information but would all prefer not to be directly quoted or have the information we shared be shared with others outside the meeting."
My understanding is that the Chatham House rule specifically permits sharing the information shared in the meeting as long as it is not attributed to any specific attendee.
IANAL but it would seem to me that one party consent just means you can record it. It does not automatically mean you can divulge.
And since you agreed to the chatham rules not to (i.e. you entered into a contract) you can still be liable for breach of contract in a civil court, with potential penalties and damages if those were part of the contract.
Of course anything you record can still be used in criminal or civil proceedings (e.g. if your interlocutor admits to a crime or utters illegal or tortuous speech, such as fraud, harassment, or verbal abuse).
It pairs really well with free speech
How does it pair well with free speech? If I think that you might be recording me without telling me, I'll stop talking.
This rule isn't a problem to be solved. It is a voluntary contract among many people. Why break it if you just don't have to associate with them.
The easy solution to what? I’m saying lack of like individual line-item attribution is a feature.
It feels incompatible with how the rest of the legal framework works.
You can be recorded in public.
In most of the US states you can be recorded in private so long as the one recording is a party to the conversation.
Why does California do this separate weird thing? It doesn't feel like my rights should go away when I cross into your state. It feels like a glitch.
The Chatham House Rule is not a legal principle. If you violate it by recording a meeting in a one-party consent state, the most likely consequence is that you wouldn’t be invited back. (Someone else posited legal consequences under contract law, but I’m not a lawyer.)
And for the record, California is not the only two-party consent state. There are twelve others.
It is code of honour - those that break it have no honour and lose any standing in these places.
It’s not a legal thing at all. It’s a social agreement that people opt into at an event.
Legally you can go to an event and act in bad faith without breaking the law. That’s not cool, but you’re not getting arrested for it.
If (or when) word gets out that you’re breaking the rules, or worse, secretly recording people against their wishes then you’d find yourself excluded from those groups and private events.
how is state law differing a glitch? privacy law is under developed federally considering the changes in scale distribution, storage, and capture tech. recording people without their awareness is a lie of omission that many would consider rude and manipulative.
A glitch that can be fixed by inserting a clause into the other solution mentioned: an NDA contract
are you sure that is a solution? one party consent sounds like a default if the parties have not negotiated something else. but i wonder if it still stands if you have agreed to a different set of rules that would bar recording or at least bar the release of such recordings. for example the default rule is i can share what i want with a conversation i have with someone but if prior to the conversation i sign an NDA then i may face a civil tort if i share information barred by the NDA.
Seems pretty obvious why in a world where if you misspeak or say something ill considered it can be all over twitter and have serious personal and professional ramifications.
Regardless of how well meaning people are in their desire to hold people to account for bad views, it does have a chilling effect, and you can't learn if you don't have a safe place to make mistakes.
The only times I've seen Chatham House rules used explicitly is when multiple companies have come together to discuss serious security concerns that affect all of them urgently (e.g. widespread 0-days, etc).
It makes sense that you want to have candid and open discussions, and those discussions will have to leak back to the respective companies for any concerted action to be taken, but you don't want your company's security specifics to be identifiable.
There are a number of different situations where I can see this being useful, but:
> “In corporate culture, there’s a liberating and freeing quality to the idea that this is a safe space for me to say unpopular things and not get labeled as a conservative or racist”
is really not one of them. I fully agree with Ocean's take that "maybe it’s just a bad solution to a worse problem," and I think there we can tease out two separate social problems:
1. People looking for safe spaces to say racist or other discriminatory things (generally identified as a politically-right problem)
2. The 0-strikes political climate we now (believe we) live in (generally identified as a politically-left problem)
(Both feel like symptoms of High Conflict: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/55711592-high-conflic...)
I think these are actually the same problem: they are both about convincing yourself that "others" are "bad" and "we" are good, and looking for every conceivable way to do so. Not just in the specific instance, but permanently and unchangeably.
Somewhere along the way (my belief is that it was around the time social media took off, but I don't have proof for that), we forgot that we're more alike than we are different, and that people can grow and learn and change, and that both of those things are good, actually. It's not like there's some fictional past where we all agreed more than we do now, but it's how we relate to or exclude others that has changed.
> Somewhere along the way (my belief is that it was around the time social media took off, but I don't have proof for that), we forgot that we're more alike than we are different, and that people can grow and learn and change, and that both of those things are good, actually.
The difference between The Before Times and now is that it was historically hard to curate and communicate with a group of people who exclusively agreed with you. This had two primary consequences:
(1) You were constantly exposed to nice people who nonetheless disagreed with you about something / everything.
(2) It made you realize that you're the asshole, if you couldn't at least be polite to someone with different views than you.
Now, living in a bubble is trivial. It's also the subtle default on a lot of social platforms.
> Now, living in a bubble is trivial. It's also the subtle default on a lot of social platforms.
Indeed. IMO, social media should have very limited facilities for blocking/muting (e.g., maximum number of accounts to block, no blocking accounts that have never previously interacted with you, and no import functionality), so that it could only be used to stop true harassment, and not to intentionally live in such a bubble. That's one of my biggest criticisms of Bluesky: the whole design of their blocklist system seems to be to intentionally encourage this sort of thing.
This assumes that mass social media is some kind of idealized “meeting of the minds” rather than like…the digital equivalent of a loud and raucous bar.
The ability to block obnoxious and hateful people is fundamentally far, far less of causative factor of information bubbles than the pervasive engagement-driven algorithmic feeds are.
True harassment is VERY easy if you can create infinite amount of new accounts and each new account can harass the person and cant be blocked. True harassment is very easy if you are someone with many followers who will target whoever you choose to.
What you suggests is setup designed so that large scale harassment is easy. Alex Jones will love it, psychopaths will love it.
uhm, hard disagree. Harassment is the #1 problem blocking helps with but... I block anything the platform suggests to me as a form of protest against it shoving click bait triggering channels in my face. I see this as resisting getting forced into a bubble by the platform.
I can't not use social media because it is the only way to get local info and it is a terrible way when you consider that for every post from someone i subscribe to, there are 6 ads and 6 channel suggestions specially chosen to entice me to join in a flame war of comments. I'd just give up if i didn't have the hope of at least from time to time catching a break because i blocked all the things the platform thought to suggest for a few weeks. My hope is to one day achieve a whitelist of local posts which is driven by geography, not agreement/alignment on politics or ideaology. since that's not an option, i'll blacklist the entire world if i must...
Yes. I've noticed a similar pattern online that I fucking hate. It goes "Group X is bad, so anyone who shares any belief with Group X is bad."
Like you, I believe that we're more alike than we are different, but that mindset focuses on the small differences over the many similarities.
The context in this article is far more corporate and far less personal than what you describe. It's corporations and wealthy people within them hoping to not have their feet held to the fire for decisions that they know might not be appreciated by, or may actually negatively impact, the broader populace.
That's my cynical take.
Alternatively, it’s a way for bad faith actors to spread their beliefs while not having to worry about their reputation. Many people with power are only hurt through public opinion, so this is the way they try to gain control over that.
This is not what I observed in the last 8 years. People with power (both D and R) get away with anything while individuals suffer for the slightest infractions.
Any given senate hearing or political speech would lead to dozens of expulsions in a standard censored software company.
It is the small people who need protection.
Yup. The most obvious example is Donald Trump himself. Instead of suffering consequences for any of the things he's said, he has been elected to president of the United States. Twice! Meanwhile if you repeated what he says verbatim in your workplace you might find yourself gone by next week.
I think that reality check is that in many social groups and in many workplaces, guys who say and do "things like Donald Trump" are rewarded again and again and again.
To claim otherwise is just a lie designed to make it so it stays that way.
You are probably getting downvoted for being too recently-political, but I noticed the same paradox.
Speech that can get one elected to presidency with a comfortable margin in the Electoral College can get another fired.
We truly live in a polarized world.
Isn’t there a danger that if the rule is selectively enforced, for whatever reasons, that it will actually decrease the credibility of the participants/organizers?
If you really believe something, say it loudly and proudly and sign your name to it. If you're not willing to have it attributed to you because it will make you look bad, then maybe you should take a moment to think about where those beliefs come from.
Well, there is a matter of safety, and not wanting to be harassed for your opinions. Some debates are so heated that an opinion stated either way is going to expose you to potential violence if not, just verbal abuse through various channels. I think even though you should be honest about your opinion, it’s obviously better to avoid that harm so why not be anonymous?
Personally, I’ve also found that stating your opinion, and having it recorded and known to everyone, makes it very hard for you to change your mind. We’re very harsh to people who do change their mind in such circumstances because the first thing we see is a record of them saying the opposite, and then we ask them to explain themselves and judge them like it’s some kind of fault in their character. There are opinions I had when I was 18 years old that I think abhorrent. I don’t want to be associated with them. I’m very happy there’s no record of me having these opinions. I don’t want to have to explain my past like that just to hold the opinions I have in the present. I have found that process never really ends — i’m regularly changing my opinions on beliefs overtime . I wonder what opinions I have now I will look back on with shame. so I try to make sure that I don’t have anything recorded for the end of times under my name just in case I want to distance myself.
Yea. The "What's going to be taboo in 30 years" question is a good one. I don't know and I don't have a good answer to that. I personally don't worry about it because it's never occurred to me to walk up close to the line of what's acceptable. I have pretty vanilla opinions.
But, for today, I always wonder when someone says they are going to be harassed for their opinions. Just what opinions are we talking about, here? That's what these discussions always seem to lack: Specific examples of what opinions you want to share that you are afraid to share.
I've always liked Stephen Fry's retort to the old "You can't say anything anymore!" line. If a friend tells you that, pull them aside in private and ask them "What exactly are these things you'd like to say but can't? We're in private now, and I'll give you a judgment-free chance to say what you think you're being prevented from saying. Go ahead!" Nine times out of ten, they still won't say it, because they know it's terrible. They just want to complain that they're somehow the victim of censorship.
The reason examples are generally those from the past it's because those from the present are, by definition, controversial and so it mostly would just derail the topic.
It just so happens that controversial views on one era frequently end up being seen as 'right and proper' in another, and vice versa.
Here's a 'safe one' unless you actually think about the implications of what it means I'm saying - forcing people, against their will, to kill (or be killed) is a fundamentally unacceptable violation of human dignity and human rights, that should never be tolerated under any circumstance.
That's probably safe to say, yet now apply it to certain situations and suddenly it becomes tabboo. Of course in the future it will probably be as plainly obviously correct as the notion that slavery is wrong.
Good example. Also possibly circumcision, eating animals.
Looking forward:
The right to choose an abortion also extends to the prospective father.
> Yea. The "What's going to be taboo in 30 years" question is a good one. I don't know and I don't have a good answer to that. I personally don't worry about it because it's never occurred to me to walk up close to the line of what's acceptable. I have pretty vanilla opinions.
30 years is a long time. Even the most vanilla of opinions can become entirely taboo in less time than that. Take gay marriage as an example. In 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act became law. Joe Biden, Harry Reid, and Chuck Schumer were among the Congressmen who voted in favor of it, and Bill Clinton signed it. In 2008, Barack Obama said "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage." Even Obama's statement would be taboo today, let alone passing such a bill.
Not that taboo —- the Speaker of the House declined to apologize for saying same sex marriage would destroy the Republic.
> Even Obama's statement would be taboo today, let alone passing such a bill.
People who literally believe and say that sort of thing are in government and literally running Republican party.
If you’re an Ivy League college professor, it is extremely risky to say that Palestine has a legitimate grievance against Israel. If you’re a small town high school coach, it would be smart to be careful about advocating for trans girls to be able to play on the girls team. You can be punished for opinions on various sides of the political spectrum.
If you're coaching a girls' team and you advocate that boys who say they are girls should be allowed to play on the team too, then that should be grounds for dismissal from the coaching role, as you'd be disadvantaging the girls on the team that you're supposed to be supporting.
This would be an entirely warranted "punishment for opinions" because of your failure to adequately safeguard young female athletes.
See? It's just wrong-think, based on appeals to emotion.
No, in that case it would be a demonstration of how unsuitable that person is for the job.
Appreciate the demonstration of why Chatham House Rule can protect opinions on the left side of the spectrum. Just to be clear, this is a real live example of someone saying that an individual should be punished for their opinions, separate from their actions.
Lots of conflation of verbal response versus physical violence here despite the massive gulf of difference.
You should expect verbal pushback on your shitty ideas. You should expect physical safety nonetheless.
> You should expect verbal pushback on your shitty ideas
There is also shitty pushback to decent, or inchoate, ideas. I strongly push back against the notion that there shouldn’t be spaces where one can say something dumb and not be crucified for it.
Again: “crucified.” Say what you actually want, I don’t know how to interpret this idea. I haven’t heard of a crucifixion in recent times if I’m being honest.
crucify /ˈkruːsɪfʌɪ/ verb past tense: crucified; past participle: crucified
1. put (someone) to death by nailing or binding them to a cross, especially as an ancient punishment. "two thieves were crucified with Jesus"
2. INFORMAL criticize (someone) severely and unrelentingly. "our fans would crucify us if we lost"
ISIS crucified a number of people as recently as 2014.
https://www.christianpost.com/news/isis-crucifies-11-christi...
See, what an excellent contrast between actual crucifixion and simply someone saying your ideas are bad and socially ostracizing you.
It is figurative speech. It is valid use of an English language.
Right and it means “don’t criticize when I say stupid things,” which is how the marketplace of ideas works.
It’s less a real problem than you think. For example lots of politicians including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were on the record as not supporting gay marriage and later said that their position on the matter had evolved.
> If you really believe something, say it loudly and proudly and sign your name to it
Sure. Not every discussion involves something I really believe in.
Also, I think it’s reasonable to believe that not all of one’s deeply-held beliefs are the public’s to know.
How do you make progress on beliefs if you have to be 100% on board with every view you express?
You might have no compunction about your beliefs, but fear being misinterpreted en masse and forever. That's what the internet does regularly.
You can post opinion A and opinion ^A and be vilified for either, right now. To say nothing of how popular belief has changed over time and place.
Whether something “looks bad” is a basis for whether to discuss it, where to discuss it, and with whom, but not a basis for determining truth.
If you really believe something, say it loudly and proudly and sign your name to it.
And then wait for the lynch mob to come round because they disagree that {people shouldn't be property / women should be allowed to own property / etc }.
> If you really believe something, say it loudly and proudly and sign your name to it.
Anonymity should be lauded and protected, BUT if you're expecting to benefit from the use of your subject matter authority or credentials, then it needs to have your name attached.
Without an identity, there is no authority.
daft
Who is this Publius guy anyway?
"There are two genders." The belief comes from watching birds and bees.
Now, say that in 2020 in a woke software organization.
Saying that repeatedly in most settings gets tedious for the audience who'd wonder whether you're alright.
Saying that any relevant technical setting as a newcomer would likely be received politely although many would then point out the ground truth behind that simplification:
Nature has many examples of physical gender not being straightforward; egg tempreture determining development in crocadiles and other reptiles for one.
Even in humans it's less that straightforward for a little over 1% of births and decidedly undecided even by experts with all the machines that beep for about a fiftieth of 1%.
Banging on about it in online forums using throwaway accounts is simply being a sad wannabe edge lord type.
> > "There are two genders." The belief comes from watching birds and bees.
> Nature has many examples of physical gender not being straightforward; egg tempreture determining development in crocadiles and other reptiles for one.
Temperature-dependent sex determination results in offspring of one sex or the other, so how does this refute the observation across species that there are two sexes? Please explain your reasoning.
I guess it contradicts the belief that sex is determined at conception? I don't know, I'm not familiar with crocodile biology.
For humans specifically we not only have xx and xy, but also xxx, xyy, xxxx, xxyy, xxxxx, xxxxy, 46xy dsd. There is a de la Chapelle syndrome, persistent Müllerian duct syndrome and more. These are just the most obvious things that muddy the waters, and I don't really know much about that topic, but confidently saying "there are two genders and you can tell by watching birds and bees" is anti intellectual
"I will put every person in precisely one out of two boxes at my discretion, and they will be happy about it".
Example: "I believe there are two kinds of people in the world, the righteous and the despicable. You belong with the despicable, I decided. If you disagree, you are woke".
The amount of inferences and insinuations you draw is a perfect example of why the Chatham House Rule is needed. I wonder how biologists discuss the issue if one hypothesis is outright forbidden. Note also that Ketanji Brown Jackson evaded the question when asked in a hearing.
Biologists would be the first one to correctly determine your sentence was not a biological hypotheses, but a political statement meant to declare your allegiance against trans rights and trans people.
They would consequently treat it exactly the way people in this thread do - with assumption that you have ideological and political goals against that group of people.
I used a made up but analogous example to see how the anti-trans rhetoric is intrinsically closed up to discussion.
It is a group of people deciding unilaterally what other people are without room for any alternatives. Say what you want against trans people, but at least they only identify themselves and ask to be allowed to exist.
Do you want to make an argument about bathrooms or sports whatever? Fine. But don't start it by de facto invalidating their existence, because that eliminates any room for a productive conversation.
They do it just fine. People who show up with crank hypotheses that are repeatedly rejected by evidence are not outright forbidden but generally not super popular.
I think it’s just a way to stop the reporting of an event turning the event into an opportunity for people to gain media coverage and propel their careers, or their interests that may not be related to the discussion at hand.
Public debates are swamped with characters who want to make a name for themselves by holding views, having a particular style, or catering to certain demographics. At this point, the debate ceases to ne a way of discussing ideas and opinions. It’s just a way to sell the participants. Likewise, there are many people who want the opposite. They hold opinions but really don’t want to be part of the wider social debate . They don’t want to be public figures defending a particular point. They just want to contribute in some way.
Having attended conferences under Chatham House Rule: It's invaluable if the event includes speakers that must maintain a specific public stance - politicians, people in highly visible roles/organizations, etc.
There's no top secret lore handed out, it's not a secret society taking over the world. It addresses the issue that any public statement will be cut up into sound bites, and the public discussion will only focus on one or two sentences, drowning out any nuance. And, if you misspoke, the public discussion will portray you as "not being aligned with your organizations values".
This allows people to set aside speechifying and talk about the actual problems. With lots of nuance. Acknowledging shared ground. Hashing out what the _actual_ disagreements are. We need more opportunities like that, not less.
And the rule only works if you're running the iterated version, and it's a high-value meeting. Because losing access to that forum is the penalty for violating the social compact.
Are Chatham House Rules just a way for people to hedge their bets? If they say something controversial, rude, offensive, or downright dodgy, they can hide behind anonymity. But if it’s a hit or something clever, insightful, or widely praised—they’re quick to claim credit. Convenient, isn’t it?
It is indeed convenient, not just for individuals, but for society at large. People keep their most "controversial, rude, offensive, or downright dodgy" only to be said amongst friends whom they trust to not "out" them, while keeping their utterances in the public sphere more self-censored, in order to avoid offending people and being rebuked. I'm pretty sure that this is how it's always been, and I'm quite happy with it.
It doesn't have to be controversial, even. It might just be a little bit private.
I'm on a social tech Slack that uses the CHR. It means if someone asks a question about, I don't know, how my company does something, I can say "ah, yeah, we used to use vendor X, that didn't work because of Y, and now we're with Z instead" without worrying about a blog post showing up that says "wlonkly from company Foo says that Foo used to use X but dropped them because..." but they can definitely use the information I gave them to help solve their problem.
> there’s a liberating and freeing quality to the idea that this is a safe space for me to say unpopular things and not get labeled as a conservative or racist,” Lederer said.
Tantalizing, now I really wonder what he said.
I think Lederer (who, by the way, is a she) isn't saying that she herself wants to say those things, she's describing one reason why something like the Chatham House rule might be popular. It's not perfectly clear from the article, which may be because Lederer wasn't clear or because the reporter didn't pass on all the details of what Lederer said and how she said it.
If I were to guess, the types of conversations that happen in these places that aren't gutter racism (they're eating the dogs etc) are going to be eugenics-adjacent, "enlightened" scientific racism instead. At least, that's what I've noticed among rationalists online.
> If I were to guess, the types of conversations that happen in these places that aren't gutter racism (they're eating the dogs etc) are going to be eugenics-adjacent, "enlightened" scientific racism instead. At least, that's what I've noticed among rationalists online.
This statement is proof for the need of this rule. Everyone who disagrees with the "one truth" is obviously a racist who is aligned with the worst of the other side. There can be no deviation or nuance. No debate, or benefit of doubt.
That is a deeply toxic view that in the past I only saw in the right. Maybe it was my own blindness. But now I see it all over the left as well.
Meh. I have seen these debates long enough to see that there is a lot of truth in that judgement. We are supposed to give infinite benefit of the doubt to people even after it is super clear what it is that they are saying. I have seen these paranoid SJW accusations to .... turn out truth enough times already.
Turns out, people who say these things are the ones who actually listen with comprehension to what is being said in those circles.
> Meh. I have seen these debates long enough to see that there is a lot of truth in that judgement.
There are fair cases of dog-whistle racism. But that is the person who is indeed racist and not necessarily everyone who falls to the whistle or happens to be next to that person. The problem is that this approach creates divisive politics.
Typically division would make sense if you're cutting off the terrible people. Unfortunately, current western politics is cutting off half of the population with a blunt instrument.
A lot of these snap judgements block our ability to self reflect. How can you tell if you're in a cult or an echo chamber?
How do you know your confirmation bias isn't lying to you?
> The problem is that this approach creates divisive politics.
No, this approach is making the existing division visible. The other approach is to politely ignore it and not talk about it, if you are anti racist be silent about what you see. Allow them to promote its politics and representants, do not object, do not point out to the obvious.
And that is pretty much how abortion protections got removed - "reasonable mainstream" was mocked for telling the truth and supposed to pretend republicans do not plan to destroy them until it was inevitable.
No. The other approach is to talk about it. Not make things more extreme. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis
This is the only effective way to end racism and hate. The problem is that you pool too many people together as "racist" which eliminates the power of the word and sends them into a position of "I'll be hated by the left no matter what I do so I'll go full on".
This strategy has objectively not worked. More Latinos voted for Trump in this election even though his rhetoric got MUCH worse. He wants to deport 18M people and revoke citizenship. Yet, they still voted for him in much larger numbers. Women whose rights were denied voted for him. Why?
You can say they're all stupid and indeed there are quite a lot of those. But the fact is that saying to a person that he, all his friends, family and community are evil and racist doesn't bring that person to your side. It pushes them further down that bad path. It might be satisfying to confront a person in a "good vs. evil" scenario, but that doesn't fix the problem and makes everything worse.
Calling things what they are is talking about it. What you want is to enable one side and castigate the other for telling anything mildly bad about the one choose side. If many people are racists, yep that word will cover many people. There is nothing weird or wrong about it.
Latinos who voted for Trump did it because they are very conservative, have a thing against blacks/arabs and like Trumps personality. Effectively very similar reasons to why non latinos vote for Trump.
> Women whose rights were denied voted for him. Why?
Trump is a lot more popular among men then among women. That is the first thing. Second, yes there are women who deny some rights like abortion for women, that is not shocking new development or something.
> But the fact is that saying to a person that he, all his friends, family and community are evil and racist doesn't bring that person to your side. It pushes them further down that bad path.
Pretending racism is not racism and enabling racism and enabling it does not make these people less racist either. It makes you more like them and it makes middle more like them.
Indeed, what happens and happened is that their opinions are the ones primary being heard, those who oppose are mocked by those who want to be seen as enlightened. What happens is that their real goals are ignored untill they achieve them.
> Pretending racism is not racism and enabling racism and enabling it does not make these people less racist either
Again. Not what I said.
I think what you heard me say is appeasement. Which is VERY MUCH not what I said. I said you should avoid instant judgement which goes against the basic process of persuasion.
I said talking to people and not judging them immediately. Asking instead of confronting. If you start by calling someone a racist his shields go up and he won't listen to you. What did you accomplish by the attack?
Nothing. You didn't change his mind. You preached to the quire. People who hear you either agree with you and people who disagree with you think you're an ahole. Everyone digs deeper into what they already believe and become more entrenched/hostile.
If your goal is to keep people in their positions and prevent change then sure, that would work. You can virtue signal and position yourself as the "good guy".
My goal is to understand people and communicate with them. Even people who might be "bad" or uninterested in communicating/changing their mind. To do that I try to interact without being too judgemental. That's hard sometimes when I read some pretty horrible stuff from some people. E.g. I had a recent debate where a guy implied that me and all of my family should be dead or homeless (I'm an Israeli) so that's hard to reconcile and indeed we didn't reach a reasonable understanding because I feel he wasn't open to another point of view. He was just looking to prove his point (which is pretty insane if his point is I should die).
But it's still a conversation worth having. Understanding what drives a person to a racist position and asking the right questions can sometimes help them along the path of better understanding.
Around 2014 a friend of mine was running from Gazan missiles every night with his kids. His son started bedwetting again and his kids were very scared. They lived in the south very close to Gaza and it is indeed a dangerous area. Back then iron dome wasn't as good and the alarm times are very short. He exclaimed that as far as he cares the IDF should bomb the hell out of Gaza. Fck them for coming after his kids.
If you would have confronted him as a racist he would have become more enraged and probably would have moved to the right.
I asked him how a Palestinian father in Gaza would feel about that. He initially gave some kickback on that so I stressed the difference between Hamas and the civilian population which made him see that his statement was of rage that doesn't represent who he is.
I'm not saying you should tolerate racism. I'm saying you should understand people, listen to their motivations and logic. Talk to them individually and understand where they are coming from. Snap judgements are very problematic and overly simplistic.
I will add: Trump did not won by being nice and accommodating to leftists. Trump won by being accusatory and aggressive. Trump won by treating "suckers" badly.
Trump winning is the ultimate proof that what you suggest is a loosing strategy.
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> As a person that would be considered dysgenic, yes, I think eugenics is bad, I guess you got me there.
Implying that I support Eugenics because I want to listen to people and not pre-judge them is pretty much the exact thing I'm complaining about.
I brought up eugenics because I’ve seen this before and you stepped up to bravely defend it against accusations of wrongthink. I think you’re telling on yourself here.
When did I defend eugenics? What specifically did I say?
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You said this:
> If I were to guess, the types of conversations that happen in these places that aren't gutter racism (they're eating the dogs etc) are going to be eugenics-adjacent, "enlightened" scientific racism instead. At least, that's what I've noticed among rationalists online.
I responded without talking about Eugenics at all... My problem was with this phrase of yours:
> "If I were to guess, the types of conversations that happen in these places"
That's a pretty problematic phrase. You're "guessing" what they're saying then judging them to be guilty based on your imagination.
Notice you're blaming me for that in this thread even though my response didn't mention that in any way. You chose to interpret that as me supporting Eugenics. That's projection. That isn't me.
That is a problematic way to look at life and at people in general.
I want to listen in on your eugenics adjacent conversations now
Given that we now have tools that can fix some serious genetic errors, and enable even people who were dealt very bad cards in life, to live a healthy life - and given that this sector of biology is constantly evolving towards more capabilities, I would argue that it makes more sense to study genetic diseases and disorders than ever.
100 years ago, when genetics was unchangeable, the only solution to any genetic problem was heavy-handed: stop that individual from procreating. I agree that this is basically fascist (though even social democrats weren't immune to this).
But in 2050, we might be able to fix terrible things like Huntington's Chorea with a single shot. Which is fascinating, but it also needs some honesty. In the late 20th century, there was a lot of activism that tried to pass off seriously debilitating diseases as "being differentially abled" etc. While I can understand them wanting to stop eugenic thinking from seeping in, this attitude becomes counterproductive when tools are being developed to actually help the sick people. Similar to anti-vaxxerism, in fact.
People like Charles Murray think people like me are subhuman for having low IQ and being non-white, the conversations I'm hearing aren't about curing disabilities they're about the "wrong type" of people procreating.
Weird that you got "curing disabilities" from my comment on "scientific racism" though. That reaction kinda concerns me.
Not everywhere is America (in fact, 96% of humanity is outside the US) and local conditions, sensibilities and conflict topics vary.
Here I live in a nation that was considered non-Aryan by the Nazis and destined to become a nation of illiterate slaves for their Master Race. During their 6 years of rule here, their plans were only mitigated by their need to win the war first, for which they needed the local industry to be operable - hard to square such necessity with repressions against the workers themselves. But they did succeed in murdering parts of our intelligentsia.
So yeah, race-based repression is evil, I am with you on this.
But I am also close to a doctor who prescribes hearing aids for children and the main context in which I hear the word "eugenics" is her problems with the deafness advocates, who want to prevent deaf kids from hearing. And they play the "eugenics" card incessantly.
I am sick of them, they are at best severely misguided, at worst evil people. And if enough people say that "helping kids hear is eugenics", they will drown out the racialists in public discourse, at least locally.
There are plenty of things you can say that are career limiting moves if attributed to an individual at a particular company. Eg. if an OpenAI employee says that ChatGPT is negatively impacting the education of children, it gets recorded, and then used in a hit piece against the company, that could go poorly. Or a Facebook employee speaking frankly about the negative impacts of social media, as another example.
With Chatham House Rules you don't have to worry about a gotcha quote getting pulled out of context or used as a statement against interest.
Negatively impacting is a bit of an understatement. It has completely and utterly ruined education of the middle, finishing what COVID started. The real question is when, not if, someone at OpenAI goes on the record to stop the madness.
Sounds like the definition of "good intentions" with no mechanisms to back them up.
All of these people seem a little bit too high on their own supply
Don't forget farming the normies for profit and other forms of enlightened classism.
> farming the normies for profit
ELI10 please.
I thought conservatives were against safe spaces?
I'm guessing this definition of a safe space (e.g. able to say what you want, with possible racism included) isn't what nonconservatives would label a safe space.
Conservatives have been known to be a wee bit hypocritical from time to time.
(To be fair, liberals can too, but IMHO conservatives are more adept at it.)
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Can you give some examples? I'm out of the loop. Personally, I am trying to think of something I could say five years ago that I can't say now.
> Can you give some examples?
I was at a party recently where someone argued hard-shell tacos are racist.
More seriously, one could probably express a broader range of views--correct or not--on Israel and Palestine five years ago than one might be comfortable expressing (or even asking about) now.
> I was at a party recently where someone argued hard-shell tacos are racist.
As a taco enjoyer I don't think this is a serious argument and it's weird that you're taking it seriously
> on Israel and Palestine five years ago than one might be comfortable expressing
As someone that has been yelled at by all sides of this debate I really don't think that's true, I was getting yelled at 5 years ago too
> I don't think this is a serious argument and it's weird that you're taking it seriously
They were yelling and called the host a xenophobe. They will not be invited back. It’s not a serious argument. But they took it seriously.
> someone that has been yelled at by all sides of this debate I really don't think that's true, I was getting yelled at 5 years ago too
You can always get yelled at. The point is almost any expression about this topic is likely, today, to set someone in a large group off. That wasn’t true five years ago.
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In 2020, it was acceptable to say that the FDA was rushing through the COVID vaccine's authorization process and not doing a good job of making sure it was safe.
Ok, but it’s been five years now. How long are you going to wait before you think it’s safe?
Vaccine Safety
There are people everywhere publicly saying vaccines are great and other saying they are terrible. Andrew Wakefield, then Jenny McCarthy, really kicked things into high gear with their claims, and that was 20+ years ago.
Then, as now, reasonable people recognize that while no vaccine is perfect (hell, even a natural exposure to many diseases doesn't always confer immunity) on the net they are improving health way more than it is causing loss of health. Then, as now, people who claim unsupported things (MMR causes autism) are going to get push-back.
The only thing that has changed, that I can see, is that the denialism is stronger now than it was five years ago.
This was laughed out of the room 5 years ago too, the only difference is now the HHS secretary designate is also an anti-vaxxer in addition to the incoming president rather than just the President.
looks like he just told us
Lederer is the woman presented as an expert to criticize the practice...
> Jenny Lederer, a linguistics professor at San Francisco State University, argued that the Chatham House Rule has intrinsic flaws.
Exactly. "I really want to say conservative or racist things but don't want to be considered conservative or racist by the public!"
Do you think people on social media should be required to disclose their names?
I would love a real-names only network. There should be other networks as well, but this should be an option.
A lot of people on Facebook use their real names, and back before I quit it, I was pretty shocked at the kinds of horrible things people would say under their real name and under a picture of their face, also, knowing full well their friends and family could easily see it. I don't think real names would help that much.
That strikes me as boomer stuff though. Not as many millennial++ doing that, and I figure that number will just decline (especially given that you can easily just go be socially repulsive with anonymity and no repercussions on other mainstream networks now).
> boomer stuff
Makes note to self: calling people boomers is totally a-ok!
I am literally referring to baby boomers, which is a generation of Americans.
"Note to self: It's okay to call people millennials now?!"
Uh yes, it is.
We already have a few: LinkedIn and the real world.
LinkedIn is a professional network. It's not designed to facilitate the same types of conversations that happen e.g. on Twitter (and no, I don't think the presence of anon accounts make Twitter what it is, at least not in the circles I care about).
"Real world" is umm... okay. Thanks for the contribution.
I use mine. It keeps me honest.
> this is a safe space for me to say unpopular things and not get labeled as a conservative
The first one is confusing. The US is a very conservative country. It just elected a very conservative president. Statistically like 40% of voters call themselves conservative.
If you look at voting maps for the 2024 USA Presidential Election, you can see that there is a blue band of Democratic voters right down the coast, including the Bay Area. The Bay Area in particular appears to have a very different culture to most of the USA, although I have never been there so cannot confirm that statement personally. I don't think that many Democratic party members consider themselves conservative, whereas a large proportion of Republican party members do.
The “blue bands” is deceiving. Cities are mostly blue, rural areas are mostly red.
Voting patterns in the US follow population density. The higher the density, the more Democratic voters there tend to be. It’s only if you look at geography that the US appears conservative; unfortunately, due to the Electoral College, “land” can effectively vote.
Mainstream Democrats are conservative, mainstream Republicans are regressive. There is no actual liberal-centric major political party in the US, let alone one that's genuinely leftist.
> let alone one that's genuinely leftist
There are plenty of elected leftists in America. We don’t have a major leftist party because we don’t have a major leftist voting bloc.
What do you consider liberal-centric policies? Or leftist?
As far as I'm aware, Democrats are still rather strong proponents of liberalism. Even most Republicans are proponents, though generally more for classical liberalism than modern liberalism.
Liberalism, arguably, isn't really on the left-right axis at all.
> Even most Republicans are proponents
If this was true, Republican policies and representation would look much differently.
Trump is not conservative.
Modern human life is built upon millenia of mistakes, not to mention natural selection, which is eons of mistakes. A huge differentiator for humans is vastly more powerful communication which let's us share and influence instead of having everyone make the same mistakes. Despite the vitriol that has plagued online forums and social media for decades, I find the opportunity to see others make mistakes hugely valuable to me. That includes saying stupid or wrong things.
I‘ve recently joined a group of professionals in a compliance role that operates under Chatham House Rules.
The idea is that you can sound off ideas and your understanding of legal issues without people from other companies turning around and blabbing about publically how you are wrong.
Presumably I don't understand current norms, but this is some pretty bizarre stuff. So people have rediscovered the basic rules of civility and it's taking the world by storm? There needs to be an explicit statement that when you're somewhere you've been invited that you shouldn't publicize what the other guests have said in order to do them harm?
Do the people who think this it is sensible to live like this even have a name for the toxic brew in which they're swimming?
There was a period when I was having fairly regular luncheon meetings in New York and the purpose was really so that people could talk openly about various tech issues and not have their name appear in a blog post (which I probably wouldn't have done anyway). It wasn't so people could spill dirt or say things that could get them in trouble with HR if they appeared in pront.
Maybe overused today but there are some times when you hold back on things if you know they may appear in print. Certainly, over the years, I've been quite careful about what I say to journalists--even those I generally trust.
People are not bound to follow this rule, correct? As in, there's no legal consequence?
> Instead, his groups have moved to signing NDAs or explicitly stating that conversations are not to be shared externally.
This seems a bit better, albeit with more work.
> seems a bit better, albeit with more work
Are the NDAs signed between attendees and the host? That puts the host in the awkward position of having to enforce the NDAs, even if the injured party is one of the guests.
Don't you mean, the offending party?
No. If you, me and Bob sign an NDA and I leak your secrets, you’re the injured party.
So I'm still confused - why would the host feel awkward protecting the injured party? Am I missing some implication of enforcing the NDA?
> why would the host feel awkward protecting the injured party?
Suing is time-consuming and expensive.
Not everything has to be legal. The consequence is you don't get invited back and some people might think less of you.
Legally enforcing every social norm is dystopian.
> Legally enforcing every social norm is dystopian.
But I didn't say that? I was genuinely unsure of whether this was something that could be taken to court if someone violated it. If it's socially bound, and the purpose is to increase free speech, I find that less compelling in today's culture.
Anything can be taken to court. I expect, in general, people get mad at the person who broke the rule, they don't get invited back to future iterations, and they suffer reputational damage. When I've been in that sort of situation, the rule is made clear and no one breaks it--at least publicly.
> Legally enforcing every social norm is dystopian
Persecuting people for their beliefs by exploiting loopholes (e.g. blast on social media, bully their employer, etc) is also pretty dystopian, don't you think?
And it's not like the persecutors ever give you the full story. For example, the reporting on Meta ending DEI didn't want you to know their rather logical view of the situation (discrimination on the basis of immutable characteristics is wrong). What fraction of people actually believe in giving a boost to certain candidates purely on the basis of race? Certainly not enough for the persecutors to allow that argument to be broadcast widely.
> Persecuting people for their beliefs by exploiting loopholes (e.g. blast on social media, bully their employer, etc) is also pretty dystopian, don't you think?
Sometimes it can be. More than one thing can be dystopian.
What do you think “the marketplace of ideas” actually is, if not talking shit about people with shitty ideas?
Such a ridiculously overloaded use of the word “persecution.”
Only if they associate their name with the disclosure ?
anonymous sources to media is pretty common way to share information.
Given the chatham house rules specificly allow that, its kind of a moot point.
I should have been clearer.
Anonymous source in the meeting leaking to news media that person X said something controversial in this summit .
Since nobody would know the anonymous source itself , social norms like being shamed or not being invited in the future will not work is the point
If the rule is given as a condition of attendance, then it could reasonably be considered a contractual obligation. The event organizer could then sue for damages on the basis of breach of contact. The extent of those damages would be related to how much reputational damage the venue or event organizer suffered, and the potential loss of future attendance caused by that.
In addition, both the subject of a secret conversation and the participants of that conversation could sue someone for disclosing the discussion on the basis of libel. My understanding of USA law is that libel has a very high threshold and is therefore rarely litigated, but in other jurisdictions, such as the UK, libel can be as simple as saying something true with the intent to hurt the subject's reputation.
Many people try to put as much as possible into bespoke, written contracts, but usually a mixture of common law and implicit contracts is adequate to litigate almost anything considered harmful by society. I doubt the NDA is actually needed as long as the Chatham House rule is made clear.
> Last year, Stanford University floated the rule as a policy to protect students from harassment, with violators facing penalties like lower grades.
Won't that enable harassment - enable people to do it without consequence?
> [At] an intimate dinner party in Los Altos Hills, Brex Supper Club salons, [...] the rules of the house are increasingly Chatham.
What a strange comment.
If after attending a dinner party people are repeating everything they heard, in public, with attribution - then that dinner party absolutely was not intimate.
> If after attending a dinner party people are repeating everything they heard, in public, with attribution - then that dinner party absolutely was not intimate
It's still helpful if you're bringing together groups of people who don't know (and thus may surprise) each other to lay the ground rules. I'd be quite upset if I held a birthday party, which may go to 30 or 40 people, and learned that something (possibly quite inappropriate) that had been said was being tweeted or whatever.
Right, but if these groups of people don't know one another - that's basically the definition of not intimate.
> if these groups of people don't know one another - that's basically the definition of not intimate
Different definitions of intimate [1]. Webster's gives an intimate club as an example. I'd also suggest an intimate dinner over which e.g. in-laws meet.
[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intimate
I agree with you. I've never lived in SV, and after interacting with a lot of folks in the bay, I'd prefer to never live there. It's seems like a weird Twilight Zone place where everyone is a business contact and nobody is just a friend. Even the concept of "intimacy" can be tacitly warped around that social framework.
It means don't front, slander, or gossip about the people who welcomed you, and especially on social media. not sure why it's hard to act like they're going to be invited back. just try not to be the one who has to be told.
I wonder what the people against anonymity would make of the Federalist Papers, if they even remember them. Many of the "founding fathers" of the United States wrote under pseudonyms or other such distractions. Probably a dismissal of the "that was then, this is now" variety, which they only haul out as a defense they do not hold in any great breadth, as those same folks will gladly go on about generational trauma, reparations, and so on. Convenient only.
Nothing wrong with Chatham house rules, stated up front. What's an embuggerance? Remembering to stick to them.
So people feel free to speak candidly?
Or irresponsibly, ignorantly, stupidly, recklessly ...
As social animals, we think, learn and grow by interacting with others. It's absolutely ok to say stupid things you aren't sure about, and I think it's generally better that people do so in smaller personal settings rather than broadcasting to the internet at large.
I agree completely. I meant - and I should have been clear - people saying stupid things to be loud and disruptive, not because they don't know and are trying to explore something. The latter is great and should be encouraged.
This isn't about people speaking candidly. It's about not hurting the feelings of people who do and work on bad things and allowing them to still get invited to events without fearing any consequences for their actions.
It's the same reason Kissinger still got invites to Manhattan social events (and, bizarrely, Clinton campaign events) long after it was known that he was a traitor and a war criminal.
No, I think it’s about not having to fear being retweeted publicly for what you intended to be private discussions.
No. The Chatham House Rule only bars the attribution of the statements, not the sharing of the statements or the things they contain.
It’s not simply for privacy or nondisclosure. You are free to disclose, the discussions are not private.
That's what I said: it's to prevent people from being quoted publicly.
People can still be quoted verbatim publicly.
Maybe I'm confused then. So one would be permitted to post on Twitter:
"khazhoux said yesterday: 'Megalopolis is the greatest film of the 21st century'"?
I thought the point was you can't attribute -- no names. And without a name, it's not actually a public quoting...
> not hurting the feelings of people who do and work on bad things
Yes, the Chatham House Rule is practically designed to exclude people who have an immutable black-and-white worldview.
How so? It would seem to encourage people to say thoughtless, shallow things, among more open things.
> would seem to encourage people to say thoughtless, shallow things, among more open things
Based on what? If anything, baseless grandstanding is incentivised by an audience.
Generally, lack of consequence results in people behaving less responsibly, but ...
> baseless grandstanding is incentivised by an audience
... the dynamic you cite has been far more influential in humanity's new social medium, social media.
Arguably, though, that is due to a lack of consequence for their actions. Zuckerberg says these things and there are no serious conequences (possibly; we'll see). When there are conequences, it does stop people - look at the effectiveness of the anti-DEI and anti-LGBTQ mobs in silencing people and organizations.
Memetic contagion meets cargo cult when someone or a group is trying to:
a. "lead" and hide attribution of a nefarious or unpopular thoughtspace or particular idea.
b. control other people through coercion with arbitrary rules like a literal cult.
It can be so very valuable. I was at a conference in the last quarter discussing the effects of the Houthis on shipping in the Red Sea. There has long been rumour that it's possible to pay a few hundred thousand dollars, funneled to the Houthis, for which your ship will be granted safe passage through the Red Sea without being shot at with anti-ship missiles, or attacked by drones. There was rumour that some of the insurers in the Lloyds shipping insurance markets were open to these negotiations. Not long ago the UN pushed out a report discussing this sort of payment.
A bod there whose situation in life made him one of the most likely people in the world to know if anyone in the Lloyds markets was engaging (except anyone actually doing it), and has a long reputation of saying truthful things under the Chatham House rules in such conferences, said he'd not seen any of that and not heard of anyone doing it. It's not the same as fact, but with his long-term reputation and his position in life, it signficantly changed my working calculus on the subject. He didn't want to be professionally quoted on it, hence the CH rule.
Nothing at all to do with having the freedom to be a dickhead or anything like that. Nothing to do with wanting to lie to people without consequence.
More like stupid is suddenly everywhere in the Bay Area.
The one fine piece of good journalism in there is that SFSU professor: humans have a hard time separating the ideas from the speaker. Done.
Now, I might be wrong, but it sure does sound like tech folks in the Bay are getting ready to take advantage of MAGA madness, and paranoid about AI / surveillance.
If anything, it’s this orange website that’s closer to untangling identity from the content, but that’s nothing new and Web 1.0 news.
> but it sure does sound like tech folks in the Bay are getting ready to take advantage of MAGA madness, and paranoid about AI / surveillance.
Congress is the one that regulates most of commerce and they are always slow and inept. I don’t expect much meaningful stuff to change. If anything it will be some sort of AI regulation that will benefit the top companies under the guise of ‘safety’ and probably get bipartisan support.
Zuckerberg also said he was planning his moves for a long time and waited until the elections were over so it didn’t seem like he was trying to influence it and any time he announced it he’d have been be accused of doing it under political pressure. That’s also how fact checking started in the first place, with extreme pressure during COVID and federal gov employees calling meta employees, yelling at them when they declined to delete things. So technically it’s a reversion of a system created under political pressure.
I woildn’t trust a damn thing Zuckerberg says about his thought process.
I've seen the existence of chatham house rules events abused pretty heavily by bullshitters as an excuse for asserting things but then refusing to substantiate them.
Sounds like a convenient trait for fascism.
It's nothing impressive. It's secrecy and corruption; it's the modern trend of power grabs and exclusivity (withholding information) over efficiency, productivity, intelligence, and all the benefits of an open, free society. It just has a fancy British name to give it legitimacy.
You want liquidity and lots of exposure in any marketplace, including the one of ideas. Ideas without sunshine tend to rot and fester. That might be why there are so many obviously stupid ones these days.
> Ideas without sunshine tend to rot and fester. That might be why there are so many obviously stupid ones these days.
This was the thesis behind e.g. Twitter. I’m not sure it’s panned out. Ideas need sunshine, but a seedling also does better in a nursery.
Interesting point. While I agree that the outcome has been bad or really catastrophic, I'm not sure it's the same cause.
Certainly ideas from positions of power need openeness and sunshine, speaking very generally. The problem on social media is the flood of crap that buries everything else, and nobody can keep up - the sunshine effect is overwhelmed.
> ideas from positions of power need openeness and sunshine, speaking very generally
Very generally. Transparency also incentivises grandstanding; you're always speaking to the audience, never to your counterpart.
Are you saying it's better for powerful people to make plans and develop ideas in secret? What about government?
At least to some significant degree, the grandstanding has nothing to do with the actual ideas and plans; it's part of the coverup; it's a distraction while the real plans are made. Grandstanders like Trump and Musk often say things they have no intention of following through on.
To the grandstanders, who are really propagandists, words are weapons and not information. And of course, everyone's words are some of each, but the grandstanders are far over toward one endpoint or axis on that graph.
Too many secrets.
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Which opinions are not wrong? Is it every one I don't hold or is there a database of rightthink I can reference? How can we have discussions and change minds if we can't communicate what we really think?
Regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the grandparent's views, i think this comment demonstrates why the gp might feel cautious about giving their honest views on the subject.
I've always just given my honest views online under pseudonyms.
Like that I think gasoline should cost more.
I'm willing to say that under my real name ;)
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How about South Africa not doing so well currently? It could be viewed through a racial lens but it means you can’t objectively discuss and hopefully help the situation. IMO this is exactly an example of where such closed rules may legitimately help. In the process of brainstorming you are bound to say something stupid or illegal but that’s the whole idea of brainstorming- to throw ideas and see what sticks
> In the process of brainstorming you are bound to say something stupid or illegal but that’s the whole idea of brainstorming
Illegal? I don't think that's true, not since ~1989 in South Africa anyway.
> In the process of brainstorming you are bound to say something stupid or illegal but that’s the whole idea of brainstorming- to throw ideas and see what sticks
That's a great point. One thing I've not enjoyed in modern corporate culture is the mental gymnastics required to usher out a statement that couldn't be interpreted as offensive to anyone on the planet. It's not like I'm _trying_ to be offensive, but as the number of rules governing speech increases, it becomes difficult to have conversations that are not laden with newspeak.
Removing that cognitive load is bound to leave more brainpower for the task at hand.
> South Africa not doing so well currently?
Unless it is group of South African expats why should we brainstorming?
Is South Africa asking for help ? Either for ideas or for money? Or is there genocide or other basic human rights abuses that we cannot but intervene.
The presumption that we can solve or think about their problems better than them is where it is offensive not what is being said, people are more than capable of finding their own solutions to their own problems.
> Unless it is group are South African expats why should we brainstorming?
Why is this an inappropriate topic to discuss?
> presumption that we can solve or think about their problems better than them
You're the only one who presumed this. (It's also presumptuous to assume that nobody outside your own context can be helpful to you.)
> You're the only one who presumed this
I didn’t say you can’t be helpful, but if not being asked that is the definition of presumption .
> Why is this an inappropriate topic to discuss?
It would be same as my neighbor discussing how to fix my problems with my wife or Mexicans having leadership conferences on how to prevent the raise of Trump . Same as how it feels for citizens when Elon Musk is doing now in UK, Germany or France
Domestic intervention or influence by foreign actors no matter if well intentioned or not is inappropriate
> if not being asked that is the definition of presumption
If I want to have a discussion about South Africa, that's between me and whomever I'm speaking to. South Africa doesn't have a global veto on conversations about itself.
> would be same as my neighbor discussing how to fix my problems with my wife
If they're having a conversation in their house about your relationship, I don't see the issue. It's rude. But it may also be interesting or even instructive to their own situations.
> If they're having a conversation in their house about your relationship
It is not private though, we are not talking about diplomats doing it in confidential communications, nobody is objecting to that .
What we are describing is equivalent to having a public conversation in the street in front of your home where you can see them having it
> What we are describing is equivalent to having a public conversation in the street in front of your home where you can see them having it
Still rude, but nothing more.
> Rude, inappropriate, presumptuous, offensive .
All degrees of the same thing ? And the degree in the eyes of the subject
Your argument circles back to why the Chatham House Rule is gaining popularity. It enforces the figurative walls of your neighbour's house.
> degree in the eyes of the subject
Yes. The people actually having the conversation.
Subject of the conversation not its participants.
In a public conversation preferences of the subject i.e. who being talked about when discussing about them publicly matters more than the participants i.e who is doing the talking
Period , done . if you disagree then you and I fundamentally different views on what is a civilized society and I hope my neighbors have my world view than yours.
> Unless it is group of South African expats why should we brainstorming?
Why not? British people discussed the US election and Trump, lots of Americans express opinions on Britain, everyone expresses opinions about Russia and Ukraine, etc.
I would say that people's opinions about countries they do not know first hand are often (if not usually) worthless, but I cannot imagine that in any of the above cases (or similar) many people would say they have no reason not to have opinions.
> Why not?
500 years of slavery, colonialism, genocide and religion, propping up banana republics and dictators and countless other crimes in name of civilizing society or recently bringing freedom, fighting communism or spreading democracy is why not.
Recent and ancient history shows time and again that the opinions become policy, governing everything from who and how aid is given to bombing anyone you don’t like . Policies change and principles abandoned with changing domestic political winds .
>How about South Africa not doing so well currently?
I recently read a book review that discussed South Africa today. One of the many points it made about the dire state of things is that the air force planes that flew overhead during Mandela's inauguration were, a decade later, completely inoperable. <https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-south-africas-brave-new-...>.
Why is that shocking? It would be the case no matter how they do as a country
As a long it was a white government there was lot of monetary support and knowledge transfer to South Africa, all the way to building nuclear weapons those collaborations stopped once the racial profile changed.
overtime that means complex technologies like military aircraft which are difficult to keep flying anytime will stop working as South Africa was and is not equipped or can afford to maintain them on their own.
no nation which flies f-35s can keep them flying if they are not in trump’s good graces now.
This is why countries like china or India or few others who can afford to, invest heavily to build their domestic defense infrastructure.
You're making the point for why people who are not South African can have interesting and meaningful conversations about South Africa. All while possibly expressing views that are incorrect but still interesting to consider and respond to.
The irony is not lost to me, my comments without lived experience are one reason why we shouldn’t do it
My objection is bigger than that though, it is independent of the merit or quality of the discourse , unwelcome discourse is impolite even if it is sound.
> my comments without lived experience are one reason why we shouldn’t do it
This is a fair rule for you to live your life by. I think it crosses a line when someone insists it be one everyone follow.
I personally got value from the comment about South Africa, and that’s despite knowing South Africans. (Their “lived experience” as non-military non-historian non-aviation South Africans is sort of irrelevant to questions of military aviation history.)
Nobody is expecting anyone to follow someone else principles.
You and OP should follow the principles that you feel best.
It wasn’t a mere discussion on military aviation history, context matters, the implication here is post apartheid the government is corrupt and incompetent, it was corrupt before too just propped up better by foreign powers.
> the implication here is post apartheid the government is corrupt and incompetent, it was corrupt before too just propped up better by foreign powers
A discussion about which one can knowledgeably have without any South African “lived experience,” apart from that of people then in that government.
Like, a group of diplomats in Jburg could probably have a more-informed discussion of American politics and history than a random assortment of Americans.
forming opinions should not be limited to lived experience because people (and states) interact in a shared world.
Our personal opinions govern how we interact with others.
The alternative is greater ignorance.
Forming opinions should not need anything yes, however promoting or publishing that others will consume should be based on stronger foundations don’t you think ?
Not really. That is how humans learn and evolve. I think it is ok for people to be wrong.
I think effort should go into honesty, humility, and open mindedness.
I'm sure someone can have different insights from their lives experience which should be recognized, but that doesn't mean they should trump all else.
I don't disagree with the spirit of your argument and lived experience should not trump all, it should have only some weight and other points should qualify their statements clearly.
We live in the age of disinformation, influencers, and anti-intellectualism that actively dismissive qualified sources, we have to put value in source quality, while not completely dismissing the ones without them.
> Why is that shocking? It would be the case no matter how they do as a country
From the review that I cited and you didn't bother to read:
>A little over a decade later and that same South African Air Force was no longer able to fly. It wasn’t for lack of planes: new ones were procured from European arms manufacturers in an astonishingly expensive and legendarily corrupt deal. But once purchased the planes rotted from lack of maintenance and languished in hangers for lack of anybody able to fly them. Most of the qualified pilots and technicians had been purged, and most of the remainder had resigned. The air force did technically still have pilots, after all it would be a bit embarrassing not to, but those pilots were chosen for patronage reasons and didn’t technically have any idea how to fly a fighter jet.
There's more, if you care to actually read it.
Surely this is a question where no answer can be simultaneously true and well-considered? (EDIT: and specific).
If they think bees are secretly plotting to overthrow the Welsh government, but are afraid to say so, they're not going to willingly reveal that they have anti-apiary tendencies in response to a direct question.
I was about to provide a fairly large list, but maybe something general is better:
You know that there is a "wrong opinion" that'll get you in trouble when you and conservatives begin to nod in agreement with George Carlin, even though you've always thought of yourself as liberal.
You might even be an immigrant and a person of color who prefers to date the same sex, and yet, you're going to keep your mouth shut because anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion.
Any opinion which is even slightly critical of MeToo and DEI programs.
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Well duh.
Are all the contrarian lemmings having self-imposed nightmares of being cancelled for eagerly sucking on the DoD teat by backing/creating AI killer drone tech because they can no longer create alpha? Say it ain't so! Or maybe it's just another hyped trend, like reading Sapiens or calling oneself a "pattern matcher".
Odds are they're not talking about saving the world in these spaces.
I have no idea whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but this is not freedom of speech, for the obvious reason that its based entirely on the limitation of speech, in this case, the freedom to truthfully state who said something.
I’m not a free speech absolutist, so that’s not a negative for me, but it’s extremely annoying to see a lot of people pretend to be pro free speech by policing what others might say about them.
The Chatham House Rule is about
\0 in the context of a specific meeting or gathering ..
\1 the freedom to speak one's mind and say whatever it is you wish to say,
\2 the constraint that no third party shall repeat your words without your permission, quote you out of context, report what you said and the company in which you said it, etc.
There's no legal binding or specific prosecution in the original context, simply a literal "Gentleman's Agreement" and the general social implication that should you make and then violate such an agreement then you will likely be excluded from similar events and such company in future.
It arose from diplomatic ranks and is a polite form of the parallel convention Snitches get Stitches.
In the UK Foreign Affairs sphere the rule is often exercised to advance a piece of policy via rumour and backtalk, nobody officially directly states that (for example) the military may be bought into play in some region, none the less word gets out that such a thing is being considered by those that can make it happen, subsequently someone folds their position and trade resumes (maybe).
"Free speech" is normally about a government restriction on speech. Most people don't take it to mean temporary restrictions during specific private events.
For example, at a funeral, the norm is not to speak ill of the dead (or any other time, for that matter), and if you break that rule, you might find yourself socially excluded. But that has nothing to do with the concept of "free speech".
The same goes for some kind of proceeding where you are not permitted to speak, or some situation where you are given information in confidence, or your signing of an NDA.
> "Free speech" is normally about a government restriction on speech
No, this is the First Amendment. Free speech as a value is much broader [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech
In the usa context yes, but i think its wrong to hold that the concept in general is soley about governments.
E.g. if someone beats you up due to a view you expressed, i consider that a free speech issue.
> E.g. if someone beats you up due to a view you expressed, i consider that a free speech issue.
If the police beat you up, then that's a freedom of speech issue (as well as police abuse, etc), since one might argue that the government is suppressing your speech.
If a private citizen beats you up, then I disagree; it's merely a matter of assault. That's illegal anyway and your speech had little to do with it. If someone beats me up for looking at them the wrong way, I'd hardly argue that it's a "looking the wrong way" issue.
I appreciate that you consider otherwise, and of course it's subjective so your view is as valid as mine. I'm just identifying that I think your concept is "creep" that has occurred over time for some subset of people, spawned by a principle that never originally included what you now include in the concept.
If you come to my house and express a view I disagree with, and I ask you to stop talking, I'm abridging your freedom of speech. (I'm not violating your First Amendment rights.)
> I think your concept is "creep" that has occurred over time for some subset of people, spawned by a principle that never originally included what you now include in the concept
You've got it backwards. The Athenians believed in both "isēgoriā, or equality of public speech, which was associated with formal political institutions and democratic deliberation; and parrhēsiā, the license to say anything, even (or especially) if it went against the current" [1].
The First Amendment is based on the freedom of speech in the English Parliament [2]. Millenia older. It isn't until the Warren Court, after WWII, that the modern interpretation that the First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring speech comes into focus [3].
[1] https://antigonejournal.com/2021/04/two-concepts-of-free-spe...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Right,_1689#The...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...
> If you come to my house and express a view I disagree with, and I ask you to stop talking, I'm abridging your freedom of speech.
To what extent are you able to abridge someone's freedom, though? The only legally permitted thing you can do is to compel that person to leave. If you are hosting that person commercially, say by running a lodging house, even that option may be restricted by other laws.
Legal restrictions on speech are a little different, because of the unlimited sovereign power of the law (what Max Weber called the state's monopoly on violence). The USA has a special limitation on its own sovereignty by means of a written constitution, but I do believe that only applies to government restrictions as parent said.
Also, it is worth noting that the freedom of speech in Britain that you link to applies only to Members of Parliament. Nobody else is afforded freedom of speech by the Bill of Rights; other people have to look to different laws to defend themselves.
> To what extent are you able to abridge someone's freedom, though
I could ask them to leave, I could threaten to not invite them back, I could withhold something they want or might want in the future. Social sanctions are vast.
> it is worth noting that the freedom of speech in Britain that you link to applies only to Members of Parliament
Yes. That is the first time a First Amendment-style protection was passed into law. The modern view of freedom of speech being constrained to what the state can and cannot do starts from around then.
> I'm just identifying that I think your concept is "creep" that has occurred over time for some subset of people, spawned by a principle that never originally included what you now include in the concept.
Fair, but I think the creep is in the other direction. I think that this notion that only the government counts is extremely new (and somewhat limited to the cultural context of the USA) and the broader version is the traditional definition of what freedom of speech means.
In your example, speech has everything to do with it. It is the motivation for the crime of assault, correct? And its intention is to suppress speech by deterring others through violence.
Free speech only means you are not prevented from expressing yourself. It does not mean freedom from consequences.
While I don’t condone violence that is not the only possible consequence. If you call me an asshole that is your right, but if I disinvite you from the party I was planning as a result that is not a ‘free speech issue’.
> Free speech only means you are not prevented from expressing yourself. It does not mean freedom from consequences.
People say this a lot but i doubt anyone actually literally believes this.
If the state executes you as a consequence of your speech, it is an unambigious free speech violation no matter how you interpret that term.
What people really mean is its not a blanket protection against every consequence, but they hide that part because then you have to explain which consequences are reasonable and which are not which is complicated and requires nuance.
> Free speech only means you are not prevented from expressing yourself. It does not mean freedom from consequences.
Honestly, I find this to be very manipulative rhetoric. Effectively, it makes the notion of free speech mean absolutely nothing. The problem here is that people want to pretend they are for absolute free speech, because saying something else is socially punished. But they are not in reality, sometimes for good reasons, so they resort to this sort of sophistry.
You can say what you want in North Korea, freely. It is just that you wont have freedom from consequence int he form of torture and death.
I don’t think it is just about government restriction. Free speech and censorship are general principles that apply to everything. But personally, I don’t think asking for confidentiality at a private event is a violation of free speech principles. On the other hand, large privately owned tech platforms that practice censorship disguised as moderation, should be criticized because they are effectively the new public square.
Being able to chose who you associate with and who you do not associate is usually part and parcel with free speech.
I'd agree with you about the NDA bit. Using courts to enforce seems anti-free speech
However the milder version of it, where if someone violates the rule they aren't invited back, hardly seems like a free speech issue. Free speech doesn't mean you have to stay friends with someone who told your secrets to a third party. Free speech means you can say whatever you want, but it also means you can not talk to whomever you want.
Freedom includes the ability to voluntarily subject oneself to obligations and enter binding contracts.